Thread by @TexasTribune

1/ Because of the holiday weekend, you will likely notice two weird changes in reported COVID-19 data over the next week.

@COVID19Tracking explains why both expected changes don’t necessarily mean anything about the state of the pandemic itself.
bit.ly/3q3YwGn

2/ First, testing, cases and death numbers will likely flatten out or drop through the holiday weekend, as more doctor’s offices and testing centers are closed and fewer health department staff are at their desks.

3/ The Texas Department of State Health Services says they are planning to update numbers each day, but some local health departments won’t be, which means daily case numbers may appear lower than they are over the holiday.

4/ Then, in the week following the holiday, numbers will spike. Holidays, like weekends, cause testing and reporting to go down and then, a few days later, to “catch up.”

5/ During a normal week, Wednesday through Saturday usually see peak reporting for tests, cases and deaths, while Sunday and Monday are usually very low in comparison.

This is why many emphasize using seven-day averages for most COVID-19 metrics.

6/ This means the data we see early next week will reflect not only actual increases, but also the potentially very large backlog from the holiday.

We saw similar holiday effects over the summer on July 4 and Labor Day.

7/ There are a few metrics that should remain relatively stable through the holiday — current hospitalizations reported by states and the new admissions metric in the public hospitalization data set from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
bit.ly/3maY1aU

8/8 We won’t likely see actual case increases from Thanksgiving exposures until the second week of December, and then succeeding waves of infections from holiday gatherings will roll in for weeks.
bit.ly/366Pm40