Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the week ending June 16, 2021
Connecticut’s long decline in COVID-19 cases slowed considerably this week, and there are other indications that the danger of the pandemic in Connecticut continues to recede rapidly.
The state recorded 280 new cases this past week, down 18 (6%) from the 298 recorded during the week ending June 16. This is a much smaller drop percentage-wise in cases than we’ve seen for much of the current 10-week decline, but given how few cases there are now in Connecticut this sort of variation doesn’t seem too significant. Case prevalence remained essentially the same, dropping only slightly from 0.83 new cases per 10,000 people to 0.78, and test positivity rose very marginally from 0.41% to 0.44%.
At this point, the number of cases and case prevalence feel like less of a useful metric for how dangerous and widespread the pandemic is in Connecticut than they have been in the past, just because numbers are so low that slight differences can seem titanic. It’s also possible that case numbers won’t reach zero, in fact, but persist at a very low level like this for some time to come without becoming a significant danger to the public in general – especially for the vaccinated.
But there are plenty of other indications that Connecticut’s situation continues to improve. The state saw at least four days this past week, including the entire weekend, without any deaths recorded from COVID-19, and hospitalizations fell dramatically from 50 on June 16th to 29 on June 23rd. The number of towns recording no cases of COVID-19 at all rose from 80 to 83, and many rural portions of the state haven’t seen a new case in many weeks.
Let’s take a look at the map.
Once again, this is a map showing a very small number of cases statewide. Only four towns had a case prevalence of over five new cases per 10,000 residents: Prospect (6.13), Bolton (6.13), Somers (5.54), and Eastford (5.59). In Eastford’s case, the town only recorded a single case, but the town’s small population means that any case there has an outsize impact on prevalence.
There are no obvious outbreaks or patterns; cases are at a low level all across the state.
Here’s last week’s map for comparison:
Case Prevalence Per 10,000, By Town
For the week ending June 9, 2021
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.
