It still sends as many people to the hospitals as it sends to the hospitals, weak epidemiological data or no. If that's more than the hospitals can handle, people start dying who otherwise wouldn't. That, too, is not an indicator subject to measurement bias imposed by lousy testing regimes. It's also a thing that is happening. We will see more of it before we see less.
The number of people that have it is under reported, so the death rate and hospitalization rates are exaggerated.