Thread by @firstresponses

Memphis/Shelby County
Covid Wk-In-Review

tl;dr
* We're 6wks from "normality"
* Case Rate: 10.8 per 100k
* Positivity Rate: 4.4%
* Active Cases: less than 1k
* Deaths: only 8 reported this wk
* Vaccinations: slowing down slightly, but should jump next wk

1/

I took the week off for Spring Break, so I'm just now catching up. Apologies if there's been some reporting that I've missed.

2/

Last year, we were set to go visit my parents and grandma on Mar14. But on Mar12, covid became real when schools closed early, so we decided to stay home.

And so, when we all got vaccinated, I wasted no time and went to visit my family ASAP.

https://twitter.com/firstresponses/status/1372712673062838282

3/

The vaccine is game-changing.

Yes, vaccinated people should still take precautions, but the vaccine has opened up so many doors that have been closed to us over the past year: sleepovers with the in-laws, date night at a restaurant, eating inside with family/friends, etc.

4/

And without any further ado, the data...

Cases continue to drop, though as you can see, we're starting to flatten out.

Still, cases are lower than they were back in our Fall low. In fact, the 101 cases/day this wk was the lowest since the wk of May17.

5/

Remember, we want our case rate under 10 daily cases per 100,000 people.

We're right there, down to 10.8 per 100k.

6/

The other key metric is test positivity rate, which we want under 5%.

We've been under 5% for 3wks now, which is great.

But we rose from 4.1% last wk to 4.4% this wk, the first increase we've seen since mid-Dec, so we'll need to keep an eye out here.

7/

Positivity is still low, so it's nothing to be concerned about yet, as long as we keep it under 5%.

But the reason it's up this week is bc of testing, which was down 10% (vs cases, which were down 5%).

Anyone not vaccinated who is out in the world needs to be tested wkly.

8/

In sum, we've met the positivity rate threshold and are right at the cusp of meeting the case rate threshold.

But vaccination changes the landscape since there are fewer ppl susceptible. Like 169k fewer ppl.

So, continue masking, but we're pretty safe now.

9/

On to vaccines...

We administered 25,760 first doses + 7,476 second doses, for a total of 33,236 total doses this week.

But last wk's totals were 26,730 + 10,877 = 37,607.

1st doses, -4%
2nd doses, -31%
Total doses, -12%

10/

Now, 1st doses are up significantly since the City took over vaccinations.

But 2nd doses are actually down.

I expect this trend to reverse (see below), but it's definitely something we want to keep an eye on.

11/

The good news is that we saw a huge spike in 2nd doses administered yesterday and, hopefully, this will continue. There's reason to think it will.

12/

Here are 1st doses & 2nd doses administered per day.

The thing to keep in mind here is that we should expect a 3-4 wk lag between 1st & 2nd doses.

And we can see that 3.5wks ago is when 1st doses started to spike. So we should expect 2nd doses to jump over the next wk.

13/

We've heard a lot of talk about "herd immunity."

Estimates are that 60-70% of the population needs immunity, either thru infection or vaccination, to essentially stop transmission.

We've not even reached half that.

14/

Now, this is just a rough sketch. It doesn't account for the possibility of reinfection, nor does it account for those who were infected who then were later vaccinated.

15/

That said, our data likely significantly undercount infections bc of lack of testing. In fact, @youyanggu estimates that local infections are over 3x higher than reported.

With that in mind, we're close to 50% of the population having some level of immunity.

16/

Again, the same caveats apply. We don't know how long immunity lasts, and I'm not sure how many people were both infected and then later were vaccinated.

17/

But we know that somewhere between 10% and 32% of the population has been infected at some point over the past year.

And we know that 18% of the population has at least one dose of vaccination.

So between 50% to 72% are still susceptible.

18/

At our current rates, we should reach the 60% immunity threshold sometime in mid-to-late April.

And we should reach 70% sometime in May.

If we can just hold on until then, this summer will be great.

But it's a race between the vaccinates & the variants.

19/

It's been a year. I think we can hold on another 4-6wks.

Let's finish strong.

20/

UPDATE: I will be cutting back my reporting. I'll no longer do daily reports or mid-wk reports, just one wkly report on Saturdays.

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