Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting 17-Apr-2021 Edition

The week of April 4 continues to look like we've seen a decrease in spread in MA.  It's still much higher than even just three weeks ago though and close to first wave peak levels.  14% higher than March 14 and 34% higher than March 7.  Don't fall into complacency, we still have a long way to go to get to where we were last summer.  As a reminder, last summer we were averaging below 350 cases per day the weeks of May 31 through September 6.... and the week of April 4 was 1,863.

Other good news: deaths have gone down significantly to where we're finally below an average of 12 per day for the first time since March 22 2020!  That's certainly great news.  This will likely continue given all things.  With that said, we must keep in mind that death is not the only negative outcome from someone catching COVID-19.  There are sometimes long-term health impacts of catching COVID-19 even if you don't spend weeks in the hospital and/or die and there are certainly economic impacts to the industries that we remain cautious around (imagine if we could get spread down to the point where it was safe to go to restaurants).

Somewhat neutral news is coming out of the hospitalizations: We've seen the increasing headcount stop and a slow decrease in headcount start, but this is still very small decreases.  Back in February, every single week had an average daily decrease in the double digits with the overall month having an average daily decrease of 31 people per day.  We then transitioned in March to increasing the headcount.  Finally, the week of April 4 returned us to decreasing but it was only 2 people per day and this past week has been fewer than 1 people per day.  Further tempering this good news is that ICU and intubations were still increasing the week of April 4 and neither has decreased more than 1/2 a person per day this past week.

Summary: there's reason to have a positive outlook on what's going on but not much.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay vigilant.

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