Category: Coronavirus

While other states are still talking of being “on fire” with Covid-19 and of having their hospitals swamped, Kentucky may be seeing some relief, at least in the rise in the number new cases daily.  The same cannot yet be said about the number of deaths or a heavy burden on the healthcare system and the professionals staffing it.  Although some good news and hard earned, we remain at a tipping point.

New Cases.
The wide variation in daily case counts attributable to existing workday schedules for data collection and reporting makes day-to-day comparisons unreliable if not misleading.  The use of rolling averages certainly smooths out the daily variation but at the cost of always being up to 14 days out of date.  However, the workflow through the weeks appears uniform enough that comparisons for any given weekday can be meaningful.  KHPI’s online epidemic profile has added a user-selectable filter to its visualizations of new case counts that pulls only the counts for any given weekday (i.e. Saturday).  In these comparisons, for every individual weekday, case counts have been slowly dropping over the past 3 or 4 weeks. However, these new cases remain much higher than before the epidemic surge that began in earnest in later October.  The overall case count of 19,904 for the week beginning Sunday, Dec. 13 is also dropping compared to the previous 3 or 4 weeks but remains much higher than the total of 11,739 for the week of Oct 18 and certainly more than all weeks prior to Sept 27.  New cases for December (already at 61,523 as of Dec. 19) are on track to set a new monthly record. 

A declining number of new cases is also reflected in a 7-Day rolling average falling faster than the 14-Day average, and a leveling off below the trend-line on the semi-log plot of those data. These and all other data mentioned in this article data can be viewed on KHPI’s Tableau Public website.  I have no doubt that this downward trend is in part due to the re-application of broader public health measures.  It also likely reflects the expected natural history of Coronavirus exposure for the cohort of individuals who contracted their disease during the Thanksgiving holiday week. 

Continue reading “Kentucky’s Third Wave of Covid-19 Showing Pause.”

Last week was a pivotal one for Kentucky’s Covid-19 epidemic as we enter the winter holiday season. As of yesterday, indoor restrictions for bars and restaurants were lifted following a week when new case counts and hospital utilization remained high. The softening of restrictions was justified in part by a decline in the published Covid-19 Test Rate, but likely was also influenced by social, political, legal, and economic pressures. While it is conceivable that we are entering a period of “plateau,” I believe we need a few more days of case accounting to be totally confident that we have left the exponential growth tangent we were on.  Even so, a daily accumulation of over 3000 new cases, 20 deaths, and record (if not saturated) hospital, ICU, and ventilator utilization does not seem to me to be a place where we should be satisfied. Most of the rest of the country expects things to get a lot worse than they are now. The new availability of vaccines is great news, but for months to come, we must rely on traditional public health measures.

I have updated KHPI’s on-line portfolio of epidemic data visualizations, including a few new ones included below. My attendant comments outline the basis for my understanding of Kentucky’s current epidemic profile.

Continue reading “Kentucky Covid-19 Update for Week Ending 12/12/20.”

I updated the data visualizations on KHPI’s Tableau Public Website with Kentucky’s Covid-Tracking numbers as of the end last week (Saturday December 5).  It was once again not a good week. Three of the seven days had the highest daily case-counts of the entire epidemic. The Seven- and Fourteen-Day rolling averages of new cases also reached new highs with the 7-Day average surging past the 14-Day one indicating accelerating growth.  Weekly new cases at 23,883 leapfrogged to a new record high that was 31% higher than the previous week.  Hospitalizations remained high amid increasing concerns of limiting pressures on staff and beds.  Along with these other objective measures of epidemic expansion, weekly deaths increased to 177,  or 74% higher than the previous week.   Total deaths in Kentucky have been increasing exponentially– more sharply so in recent weeks.  At the current rate of increase, total deaths are doubling every 10-11 weeks. Even at the present rate, we could see 3000 aggregate deaths by mid-January. Expectations are that due to the arrival of winter’s indoor weather and its holidays, deaths will accrue even faster.  We are yet two weeks past Thanksgiving Day and have not yet seen the full impact of that holiday week on on cases, hospitalizations or deaths.  In my opinion, these numbers do not suggest that we have controlled our Kentucky epidemic nor to show that have reached a new (acceptable?) plateau. It will take weeks to be able to make such claims.

Continue reading “Kentucky Among States With Fastest Growth of Covid-19.”

Reported Covid-19 data last week were obviously underreported both in Kentucky and in the United States as a whole.  We have come expect that a normal weekend administrative schedule underreports cases and deaths on Sundays and Mondays with corresponding catch-up reporting over the next few days.  Bracketed between two weekends, with Thanksgiving holidays in the middle, this artifact was magnified.  Even 7- and 14-Day averages of new cases were unable to smooth out the trajectory of Kentucky’s epidemic.  New Kentucky cases and deaths for the week were both modestly down from the week before.  However, even with two days of reporting left to go for the month of November, the respective monthly tallies tell the troubling tale.  Total new cases in Kentucky rose 75% from 38,379 in October to 66,963 in November.  Deaths rose 29% over the same period from 311 to 400.  Sunday’s preliminary counts of cases and deaths suggest catch-up already occurring.  Based only on November’s data so far, at the current 14-Day average rate, we remain on-track to double new cases every 3-4 weeks with a possible 5000 new cases daily by mid-December.  Given that travel by car and plane last week reached highest levels by far since the epidemic began, and that Target’s St.  Matthews Black Friday parking lot looked like Christmas; it is almost certain that our rate of epidemic expansion will increase further.  Hospital and ICU occupancy remain at record levels.  The full updated panel of Kentucky’s data visualizations is available at KHPI’s Tableau Public website.

Continue reading “This Week’s Covid-19 Update For Kentucky and The Nation Is Incomplete But Troubling Nevertheless.”