New Statistics Show Higher Percentage of Older Pennsylvanians Hospitalized Because of COVID-19

| March 28, 2020

HARRISBURG, Pa. (EYT) – While COVID-19 is affecting at least 10 percent of every patient age bracket in Pennsylvania from 19 years old and older, it is still most serious in those 65 and over, according to new data released by the Commonwealth’s Department of Health.

As of noon Friday, March 27, only 18 percent (or roughly 399) of Pennsylvania’s 2,218 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were 65 years old or older.

But while the oldest Pennsylvanians make up for not even a fifth of the total cases, they account for 48 percent of the total hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the commonwealth. The information released by the Department of Health did not say how many total hospitalized COVID-19 patients there are.

The second-highest hospitalization rate in Pennsylvania is also among an older group, those 50 years old to 64 years old, who account for 28 percent of the total cases in the state but 27 percent of the hospitalized cases.

For comparison, those 25 years old to 49 years old, a 24-year age span as compared to a 14-year age span of those 50 to 64, comprise 40 percent of the COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania but still have a lower hospitalization rate at 21 percent.

None of this should come as a surprise, as preliminary findings from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta show that older Americans are more likely to be hospitalized because of COVID-19.

A recently published study on the CDC’s website showed that between Feb. 12, 2020, and March 16, 2020, there were 2,449 cases of COVID-19 in the United States.

Twelve percent (or 508) of those patients had been known to be hospitalized. Of those patients, 44.9 percent (228) of them were 65 years old or older, including 9 percent (45) who were 85 years old or older.

In the CDC study, 17 percent (approximately 86) of those patients were between the ages of 55 and 64 and another 18 percent (approximately 91) were between 45 and 54.

Meanwhile, in the CDC study, only 20 percent of the hospitalized cases between Feb. 12 and March 16 in the United States were between the ages of 20 and 44, and less than 1 percent of those hospitalized were 19 years old or younger.

That also is what Pennsylvania is seeing with just slightly over 1 percent of all hospitalized cases in the Commonwealth coming from those 18 years old or younger and just another 3 percent from the age range of 19 years old to 24 years old.

Here is a breakdown of Pennsylvania COVID-19 cases by age range and the percentage of the hospitalized cases by age range.

Age Range % of Cases % of Hospitalization
0-4 less than 1% less than 1%
5-12 less than 1% 0%
13-18 2% 1%
19-24 11% 3%
25-49 40% 21%
50-64 28% 27%
64 & older 18% 48%

Note: Percentages may not total 100% because of rounding


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