More than 10,000 patients in the U.S. were diagnosed with COVID-19 in 2020 while in a hospital for other reasons, according to federal and state records analyzed by Kaiser Health News.

A majority of the patients were 65 and older, though patients who contracted the virus while in a hospital were of all ages. They were admitted for an array of other health problems like heart attacks, sepsis, kidney failures, kidney disease and more but ended up leaving with COVID.

Some of the patients did not get leave the hospital at all due to dying from the virus.

"About 21% of the patients who contracted covid in the hospital from April to September last year died, the data shows. In contrast, nearly 8% of other Medicare patients died in the hospital at the time," the KHN report reads.

KHN concluded through work-safety records, medical literature, and interviews that a reason for the hospitals’ “high-spread” issues was that hospitals leaders were not aware at first of COVID-19’s severe “airborne nature.”

This resulted in coughing patients being more hazardous than expected to roommates and staff members.

Federal officials report new staff and resident cases weekly for every U.S. nursing home. The Department of Health and Human Services only reports COVID data in hospitals statewide, which has made it difficult to pinpoint which exact hospitals are having outbreaks.

The KHN report comes after infectious-disease consultant Manoj Jain wrote in January for the Washington Post how the CDC estimated that 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections led to 100,000 deaths.

"If doctors and nurses washed their hands diligently, research estimates that 40 percent of these infections could be prevented," Jain wrote. Jain also noted studies "that front-line health-care workers in the United States have a covid-positive rate that is four times greater than the general population."

There were 352,000 coronavirus deaths in 2020, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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