Thread by @firstresponses

Memphis/Shelby County
Covid Wk-In-Review

tl;dr: Good News
* Cases continue to drop, down to 340/day
* Positivity rate, down to 9.3%
* Hospitalizations continue to drop
* Deaths, way up to 76
* Vax's remain low

1/

Here are avg daily cases by report date and test date. And what this says to me is that we finally caught up with the backlog (notice that the big discrepancy b/t the two a few wks back is gone). As a result, reported cases are now back to being accurate.

2/

In mid-Aug, cases were artificially low bc of the backlog. Then, as they caught up with the backlog, cases were artificially high.

But there's reason to believe that the 340 cases/day this week is accurate. It's the lowest since the wk of July 18.

3/

Our case rate is down to 36.3 per 100k.

4/

But the truth is that most cases are coming from the shrinking group of people who are not vax'd and who have never had covid.

Since 52% have been vax'd & an estimated 45% have had covid, when you subtract the overlap, at least 85% of people have some type of immunity.

5/

And so the case rate of that "susceptible" population (those with no immunity) is over 900 per 100k.

6/

Testing is up.

But the dip we saw a couple weeks ago makes me wonder if they are still processing the backlog. Maybe they prioritized tests more likely to be positive and are now getting to those more likely to be negative. I don't know, it just looks off.

7/

With testing up and cases down, the positivity rate has fallen dramatically to 9.3%.

This is the first time we've been under 10% since the wk of July 4.

8/

Covid hospitalizations continue to decline, which is great news.

But there are still an extremely high number of covid patients, so much so that "elective" surgeries are still limited.

9/

After a couple weeks with declining covid deaths, we saw a spike this week.

But it's important to remember that these deaths are likely the result of cases from at least a month ago. There's a lag between infection, hospitalization, and death.

10/

We're now avg'ing 104 pediatric covid cases/day, down from 199 a wk ago & 265 two wks ago.

Part of that is related to the backlog. Also, we don't know how many kids are being tested, so we don't know the pediatric positivity rate. So it's hard to know what the data mean.

11/

SCS student cases are down as well.

This is great news, but I still wonder how many tests and what the positivity rate is.

I also wonder what the data look like by school. As a parent, district-level data don't help me make informed decisions about my kids.

12/

Just like last Fall, cases are dropping.

But they are dropping from much higher levels that lasted about a month longer.

And that makes me worried about the Winter.

The good news is that we have a lot of immunity in our community. But how long does it last?

13/

That's all for this week.

Let's enjoy this wonderful weather and get outside while we can. We know outdoors is nearly 20 times less risky. I think this is a big reason cases drop in the Fall. (And why cases rise when the hot/cold weather push us indoors.)

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