Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the week ending Nov. 25
Did you stay home this Thanksgiving? If you’re like way too many Americans, you probably didn’t. The pandemic is still raging, and everything we’re doing wrong this week could absolutely make it worse.
Which is too bad, because there’s actually some very tentative good news in this week’s prevalence map.
Case numbers in Connecticut have been increasing sharply every single week since late September, when the second wave began to build in earnest. For the week ending Sept. 30, there were 1,235 new cases. The week after that it was 1,184, then 2,497, then 3,010, then 4,246. November seemed like it was going to be much, much worse. For the week ending Nov. 4 there were 6,246 new cases, followed by 9,368 for the week ending Nov. 11, and 12,314 for the week ending Nov. 18.
That brings us to this week. Given the progression from the last two months, I would have expected 15,000+. Instead? There were 12,124 new cases for the week ending Nov. 25.
That’s right. The number of new cases stayed basically the same. It even went down a little bit.
This should be great news. The last time we saw this kind of slow-to-a-stop in the rate of new cases per week, we were just hitting the peak of the first wave back in April. After that, the rate of new cases dropped off significantly and we began to enter the summer lull.
Does that mean we’re approaching the peak of the second wave? Infectious disease experts don’t think so. The Director of Infection Prevention for the Hartford HealthCare system, Keith Grant, ARPN, said in a recent news briefing that “… We have seen significant increases seven to 20 days after every holiday.” He added: “I would love for the citizens of Connecticut to prove science and epidemiology wrong, but I do expect to see an uptick in cases.”
That’s why most experts predict that the peak will come in either mid-December or after the holiday season in January.
It’s heartbreaking that we can’t have just a little more discipline, because our renewed focus on the pandemic and new restrictions and penalties put in place by the government are clearly working.
Let’s take a look at the map for the week ending Nov. 25 (top).
Case prevalence, or the number of infections per 10,000 people in each town, remains highest in the cities. Hartford, Waterbury, Danbury, New Britain, Torrington, Stamford, and Bridgeport all have case prevalence numbers over 50. Waterbury leads the state with a case prevalence of 67.26 cases per 10,000 residents. Suburbs and rural towns are in a state of flux. Some, like the Farmington Valley towns and the lower Connecticut River towns of Middlesex County, are seeing increased infections. Others, like the Bridgeport suburbs, northeastern Litchfield County, and greater New Haven, are seeing a decrease.
New Haven and New London both bucked the trend of cities seeing high case prevalence; their prevalence numbers decreased from last week and now both are under 30.
The map is in no way better than last week’s. However, it isn’t worse, either. That in and of itself is a victory.
If only we could make it last.
Here is last week’s map for comparison:
Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the week ending Nov. 18
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.
