Hospital overcrowding caused by covid-19 and chronic kidney disease mortality

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been the largest public health emergency in recent decades. While there have been many epidemiology studies on this pandemic, less research has been done to examine its indirect impact on mortality. This paper utilizes Kolmogorov-Zurbenko (KZ) filter to examine chronic kidney disease (CKD) mortality trend in Florida hospitals and finds an indirect impact of the pandemic, namely the excess Florida CKD deaths due to pandemic-period hospital over-crowding. The results show that kidney disease patients suffer higher mortality from hospital overcrowding, thus prompting the need to allocate healthcare resource to more vulnerable patients. This paper also proposes a measurement method of hospital overcrowding with KZ filter. The strong correlation between CKD mortality and hospital overcrowding confirms that the level of healthcare has a significant influence on the wellness of CKD patients.