Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the Week Ending June 17
This week’s prevalence map, which tracks the number of new cases of COVID-19 per 10,000 residents by town, continues a trend of slowly declining numbers of cases all over the state. This is welcome news for a state that entered its second phase of reopening this Wednesday.
Perhaps the best news in this map is the equalization of the cities to the towns surrounding them. Hartford’s rate of infection per 10,000 people is just about the same as the rates in Windsor, East Hartford, and South Windsor. And New Haven is about the same as East Haven and Hamden. Before now, the cities tended to have a noticeably higher prevalence rate than surrounding towns.
This is hopeful news for Connecticut’s black and Hispanic communities, which have suffered higher rates of infection throughout the pandemic. It also strongly suggests that Black Lives Matter protests have not led to an increase in infections, as many feared.
Two outliers to the general downward trend are Enfield and Montville, both home to state prisons. In Montville’s case, the increase was due to mass testing of prisoners. The reason for the increase in Enfield remains unclear, but correction officers at nearby Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers have been protesting what they view as a work environment that puts them at undue risk based on staffing shortages. Prisoners remain at high risk for the disease.
Connecticut and surrounding states remain better off than much of the rest of the country, which is still struggling to contain the first wave of the coronavirus.
Here’s last week’s case prevalence map:
Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the Week Ending June 10
And here below are charts that visualize the three-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases reported in Connecticut, including new positives and new negatives based on data from the Department of Public Health, and also the daily hospitalizations for COVID-19: