Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting 22-Sep-2021 Edition

There's some potential to hope that we're getting better...

We'll start with the weekly Wednesday update on new hospitalizations.  

June 13-19 2021   -  13.4
June 20-26 2021   -  12.7
Jun 27-Jul 3 2021  - 11.4
July 4-10 2021      -  14.3
July 11-17 2021    -  14.3
July 18-24 2021    -  17.9
July 25-31 2021    -  34.0
Aug 01-07 2021    -  42.7
Aug 08-14 2021    -  54.7
Aug 15-21 2021    -  69.0
Aug 22-28 2021    -  72.0
Aug 29-Sep 4 2021- 72.1
Sep 5-11 2021        - 79.0
Sep 12-18 2021      - 74.7

Did you see that?  New hospitalizations went down last week.  I mean, ever so slightly... and they're still higher than they have been since April 2021 and are still higher than we were seeing anytime from the second week of June 2020 through the first week of November 2020.... but still... that's... something?

To keep us in good spirits, we'll skip the intubation and ICU bed usage since both of those continued to increase and skip straight to just general hospital bed use which, while it increased, it didn't increase by double digits per day as we'd seen in 6 out of the last 7 preceding weeks.  By the way, speaking of regular hospital beds, we're now at 91.2% of the beds being in use.

Moving to cases, as has become the custom of late, even without the coming continued increases in cases for the most recent week, that week already is seen to have a substantial increase in cases over the preceding week.  It now seems inevitable that this week we'll reach the 1772.6 cases per day average that we did the first week of November 2020 (which will also put us higher than all but 2 weeks of the first wave).

June 13-19 2021      -   72.6 cases per day (  1.05 cases per 100,000 people per day)
June 20-26 2021      -   65.7 cases per day (  0.95 cases per 100,000 people per day)
Jun 27-Jul 3 2021    -   79.1 cases per day (  1.15 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
July 4-10 2021        -  118.1 cases per day (  1.71 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
July 11-17 2021      -  264.3 cases per day (  3.83 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
July 18-24 2021      -  478.6 cases per day (  6.94 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
July 25-31 2021      -  721.4 cases per day (10.47 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
August 01-07 2021 -  999.9 cases per day (14.51 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
August 08-14 2021 -1157.7 cases per day (16.80 cases per 100,000 people per day) 
August 15-21 2021 -1316.9 cases per day (19.10 cases per 100,000 people per day)
August 22-28 2021 -1441.9 cases per day (20.92 cases per 100,000 people per day)
Aug 29-Sep 4 2021 -1553.7 cases per day (22.54 cases per 100,000 people per day)

Sep 5-11 2021         -1680.3 cases per day (24.37 cases per 100,000 people per day)
Sep 12-18 2021       -1635.9 cases per day (23.73 cases per 100,000 people per day)

This again is cause for cautious optimism as this is the first time that we've seen in a couple months where the average daily cases the preceding week weren't already known to be higher than the week before that by Wednesday.  Again, it's not a huge decrease and we're still higher than we were at the end of August... and higher than any week prior to that going back to mid-April 2021... but we didn't reach the 1772 cases per day that we saw the first week of November 2020.  It does suggest that we may have finally started reducing the spread though.

The death rate appears to have plateaued at roughly 10-11 deaths per day... which I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear that is higher than any other week going back to the start of May 2021... but is still lower than any week in 2020 after March 22, 2020.

Stay safe. Stay informed.