Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting 30-Dec-2020 edition

A bit of a good news/bad news situation today.

Good news: It looks like new cases may be on the decline.  The week of Nov 29 had a daily average of 4629, the week of Dec 6 had 4621, and the week of Dec 13 had 4419.  At this rate, we'll be back to first-wave peak numbers in... 10 weeks?  Back in May, we saw average cases per day decrease by about 350 week-over-week for a few weeks till we got down to the point of deciding to re-open at which point we immediately saw a reduction in that trend and within a month had pretty much stalled out.  We'll see what happens in the coming weeks.  I would also suggest we take the potential reduction in case counts with a bit of a grain of salt given that Dec 21 (Monday last week) has captured the highest single day increase crown and Dec 22 is the 5th highest and may well become 4th within a few days if it isn't bypassed by a day from this week.

Bad news: The death rate is increasing rapidly.  The week of Nov 29 had a daily average of 42, the week of Dec 6 had 50, and the week of Dec 13 had 53, and the week of Dec 19 had 61 (and it'll likely stay around that number).  3 of the days last week had higher daily death counts than any day prior to last week going back to May 28.

Good news: We saw a decrease in hospitalizations today.

Bad news: In the last 7 days, even with potentially seeing a decrease in cases, we saw a 9% increase in hospitalizations, a 2% increase in intubations, and a 6% increase in ICU headcount.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed.

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