As of Wednesday, October 20, the number of new cases of Covid-19 and the test positivity rate continue to fall sharply. The 7-Day New Case number was 1590 and the 7-Day Test Positivity Rate 6.83. Both of these are about where we were last February when we were halfway down from winter’s peaks, but still considerably above last summer’s nadirs of 142 cases and 1.79 percent of tests.
Hospital bed and ICU utilization (which track each other closely) are also clearly easing but not to the same extent as new cases. For example, ICU bed occupancy this week is nearly as high as the peaks of December and January. (One could speculate that this may be connected to the enhanced virulence of the Delta variant or perhaps even better reporting.) If we continue to see fewer new cases at the same rate since September 8, we could be below 500 daily by mid-November.
New daily cases of Covid-19 in Kentucky have been dropping sharply since mid-September in close parallel with the Test Positivity Rate. Hospital utilization is falling as well but remains high with ICU utilization even higher than it was last winter as measured by number of beds currently filled. Daily reported deaths (expected to lag new cases) have not yet begun to fall with a current 7-Day average of 35 deaths per day. A complete tally of Covid-19 deaths will require weeks to months to be compiled. This welcome turn-around in what was an even worse flair of the Kentucky epidemic is the result of more rigorous attention to the same proven public health measures that reversed our three previous ones and the increasing rates of effective vaccination. The fact that case and death rates match or exceed those of last mid-winter should be sobering as the pool of susceptible individuals of any age by virtue of vaccinated status has shrunken! Raw incidence rates of new cases show that all but two of Kentucky’s counties are still in the in the high or moderate range of risk. We need to remain humble and focused until we can reliably consider ourselves to be approaching “normal.”
There is no longer any doubt whatsoever that many fewer people are getting sick from Covid-19. Even though considerably volatility in daily case counts throughout each week remains, the counts for each of the seven individual weekdays are way down. The 7-Day average of new cases is falling much faster than that of the 14-Day average. Each of the last three full weeks has had dramatically fewer cases than the week before. The semi-log plot of new cases is also decidedly falling. However, the open question remains, “how low can we go” as we enter the indoor winter season with its sports and holidays and the delta variant still alive and breathing down our necks throughout the state and country. In retrospect, it is somewhat unnerving to see the relentless aggregate rise in both cases and deaths over the last twelve months. As reassuring as things seem now, we have been here before. In my thinking, our best public health measure is to both believe and act on our state motto: “United we stand, divided we fall.”
Hospital utilization in crisis state. Deaths rising as expected. Community struggling to find the right path forward.
[Addendum Sept 25, 2021: Data on Tableau Public updated as of Friday. New cases and Test Positivity Rates clearly going down. Deaths not yet showing meaningful declines. Hospital, ICU and Ventilator utilization still at record highs. New cases for ages 18-and-under averaging 27% but declining from high of 31% on September 1. See additional notes at the bottom.]
Since the last article in this Covid-19 tracking series, I have been waiting to get through the low reporting-days of a weekend to allow time for the necessary 7-Day and 14-Day averages to reveal a reliable direction of our Kentucky epidemic of Covid-19. A number of indicators show new daily cases to be holding at a steady state with indications of a possible decline. The concern is that the 14-Day average of some 4000 daily case is still higher than any time since March 2020. With three reporting cases left this week, this September will have given us the largest monthly number so far, probably outstripping even the dark months of last December and January.
It has been more than two weeks since I posted a full update of Kentucky’s Covid-19 epidemic status. As I commented on the article in following days, data collection volatility, exacerbated by the Labor Day weekend, did not give me the confidence to opine one way or the other the direction of epidemic status. Available numbers as of the evening of Thursday, September 16 are compatible with the number of new cases entering an interval of steady-state, albeit hovering between 4000 and 4500 news cases per day which exceeds the rate of the darkness of last winter. That is not a good place to be.
[Addendum: Friday evening’s new numbers do not really alter the state of affairs or conclusions outlined in the following paragraphs and graphs. Specific detail is added at the end of this article.]
