Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the week ending November 11
Now that the dust has settled from the election, it’s past time for the people of this state to turn our full attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has ballooned out of control all across the nation over the past month. We’re already in for a very difficult winter, but if we don’t curb the spread now we’ll be facing a nightmare instead.
Yes, I’ve heard about the vaccine. It’s exciting. It’s hopeful! Maybe, just maybe, we can have this thing beat sometime during 2021. But that vaccine isn’t ready, yet, and this virus just keeps spreading.
I’d love to see the government do more to stem the tide. Banning large gatherings, even in homes, is a start, but like the mask mandate it’s really hard to enforce. How in the world do we get people to take this seriously?
Maybe an aggressive social distancing and mask use campaign by the White House would make a difference. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait until January 20 for that one.
Just in terms of recorded new cases, this is the worst week Connecticut has suffered since the beginning of the pandemic back in March. There were 9,368 new cases recorded between Nov. 4 and Nov. 11, which works out to a case prevalence of 26.22 new cases for every 10,000 residents of the state.
It’s likely we were in worse shape back in April, but we didn’t have the testing capacity to actually measure it at the time. Hospitalization numbers were much higher then than they are now, as was the rate of deaths. Our hospitals aren’t overwhelmed, and the ICUs aren’t full.
That doesn’t mean we aren’t facing a serious problem, though.
Looking at this week’s map we see a cluster of towns in northern New Haven County suffering the worst of it right now. Seven towns in that region – Waterbury, Wolcott, Prospect, Meriden, Wallingford, Hamden, and Seymour – all have case prevalence numbers of 40 new cases per 10,000 residents and over. On the coast, both Bridgeport and Fairfield also have a case prevalence of over 40. Bridgeport recorded 769 new cases last week, which works out to a state-leading case prevalence of 53.07 new cases per 10,000 residents.
Danbury continues to struggle, as well. Their case prevalence this week was 45.67, which is the same as it was last week.
In better news, some of the hotspots in eastern Connecticut are starting to fade. No town in New London or Windham Counties has a case prevalence of over 30 this week, which was not true last week. New cases are still generally up across the region, but there are no alarming spikes anywhere.
Northeastern Connecticut continues to be quieter than other parts of the state. Five towns there reported no new cases at all this past week. Hopefully, that’s a trend that continues.
But other than that, there’s not a lot of comforting news here. The virus is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.
Here is last week’s map for comparison:
Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the week ending November 4
Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.
The views, opinions, positions, or strategies expressed by the author are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of CTNewsJunkie.com.