HARTFORD, Conn. — There are always a number of ways to analyze and interpret COVID statistics, and based on which perspective you choose, like evaluating where we’re at versus where we’re headed, you can come to some different conclusions.
Here are some different perspectives on this latest wave being caused by the Delta variant.
It’s always important to look at the overall picture, and with that lens, Connecticut’s 14-day rolling average, which as of Wednesday morning was at 1.91%, is still far closer to its lowest point than it is to the peaks of any past waves.
However, the concern is not where we are, it’s where we’re headed, and how quickly.
If you compare this latest rise to the rise we saw last summer, it becomes clear how much more contagious the Delta variant is compared to the initial strain of the Coronavirus and all of its other variants.
Last summer, the 14-day rolling average for positivity first bottomed out at 0.72% on July 27. From there, it took about 90 days to rise a full percentage point.
This summer, the positivity rate bottomed at a much lower point, at 0.42% on June 23. However, the subsequent rise has been much faster – it rose to 1.91% in a little over a month.
The stark difference may be attributable, in part, to changes in testing volume and demographics, but there is a similar difference in hospitalizations. The hope is that the vaccination campaign will keep deaths and hospitalizations relatively low even if cases spike, which is the case, currently in the United Kingdom.
To date, we’re not seeing much evidence of that yet here. Hospitalizations are currently rising at a much faster rate than they were during the beginning of last summer’s wave, although, at just around 100, they are still a small fraction of what they were in past peaks, including the first wave in April of 2020, when in Connecticut, nearly 2,000 people were hospitalized with COVID at one time.
HERE ARE MORE WAYS TO GET FOX61 NEWS
Download the FOX61 News APP
iTunes: Click here to download
Google Play: Click here to download
Stream Live on ROKU: Add the channel from the ROKU store or by searching FOX61.
