I’m changing the order a bit this week because we have some amazing news.
Vaccinations… WE ARE STARTING TO SEE THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF VACCINATIONS. The COVID19 Tracking Project shared the amazing news yesterday with their analysis on Long Term Care (LTC) Facility deaths. From Sept 3-Jan 14, the share of deaths linked to LTC averaged 35.6% (for a reference, 1% of the U.S. population reside in LTC). Then, over the last three weeks, the share of deaths associated with LTC outbreaks began to decline. On Feb 11, LTC deaths only accounted for 18% of total reported deaths in the states. This, ladies and gentleman, is amazing to witness and something to celebrate.
Other vaccination updates: Earlier this week we also hit a major milestone: 10% of the U.S. population is now vaccinated. This ranges on a state-level. Alaska continues to lead with 18.2% of the population vaccinated with at least one dose. This is followed by New Mexico (14.9%) and Connecticut (14.7%). Georgia has the smallest proportion (10.1%). Texas, you’re at the bottom at 10.6% and California you’re 12.3%. 59.1 million doses have been administered (an average of 1.58 million doses per day).
Cases… continue to skydive. Our 7-day average (77,381) is now the same as it was on October 22 (74,844). Today, cases in 44 states are decreasing and 3 states are plateauing. Cases in 4 states are increasing. Last week I was nervous because the Northeast had an increase in hospital admissions. We are now seeing that materialize; VT and NH are increasing in cases. This is making me a bit nervous as we should start seeing an uptick shortly due to the variants; I’m hoping this isn’t the beginning.
Testing... is decreasing. This isn’t too worrying though, because test positivity rate (TPR) is 5.7% in the United States. Which is AMAZING. This is the recommended rate (according to the WHO) to keep a pandemic under control. We just want to be sure our testing doesn’t continue to decrease. Because, if this case, TPR will start increasing and we move from proactive public health to reactive public health.
Hospitalizations...continue to plummet. 41 states are decreasing and 9 states are plateauing. One state is increasing (AK), but not by much, so I’m not too worried about them. This morning 62,300 people were on hospital beds for COVID19. We are STILL higher than the peak in April (59,779) and July (59,718), but closing in.
Deaths... are slowly but surely decreasing. 42 states have decreasing deaths, 4 states are plateauing, and 5 states are increasing. Yesterday 2,616 souls succumbed to COVID19 adding to a total of 483,223 deaths in the U.S. We are still predicting a total tally of 500,000 deaths by end of February.
Variants... continue to gain speed:
B.1.1.7 variant: 1528 cases across 42 states. This is now doubling every 12 days
B.1.351 variant: 21 cases in 10 states
P.1: 5 cases in 4 states
Areas of concern…
I’m still a bit concerned about the Northeast
I am also still concerned about the speed of variant spread and implications for mid-March
It’ll be very interesting to watch the impact of the Texas storm on Texas transmission. On one hand, cases could plummet because people were at home. On the other hand, ~3 million people didn’t have power and some (like myself) were forced to jump from house to house for warmth. There were also warming centers open; masks were required at all of them, but we all know how many people actually follow instructions. We won’t “see” the impact for at least another 2 weeks while reporting and testing catch up.
Love, YLE
Of course, I’m always happy to see lower cases and deaths, but it’s hard to not feel impending doom with the upcoming variant surge. 😢 but today we can celebrate the good with you!!!! Question- did your LTC facility study also cover case reduction rates? Or just death rates there? I would love to see their case number stats after the vaccine too!
The college kids in Vermont are resulting in outbreaks. For example, UVM (University of Vermont) had 78 positive cases this week. Do you think this may skew the results in Vermont as the state has such a small population and has generally done a good job of keeping their cases low? For example, one big outbreak like this one can increase the percentage more dramatically than in New York. (I live in Northern New York, but can see Vermont from my house!)