Weekly COVID-19 Round-up - 10/7/21
River City Data No. 51
I started the newsletter just about a year ago, and here we are at 51 issues. When I looked back at River City Data no. 1 this evening, I found myself struck by the enormity of the past year. At the beginning of October 2020, we had registered 142,732 cases and 2,360 deaths. We know this is too low, of course, due to limited testing access at the onset of the pandemic.
However, contemplating how things have changed since October 9th of last year is something. In the past year, we’ve added 703,152 new cases and 10,022 new deaths. Ten thousand deaths. I write tonight with a notable pit in my stomach because of that number. Those are parents who have left their children orphaned and elderly neighbors who had to say goodbye to grandchildren over iPads.
Of the new cases we have added in the last year, somewhere between 70,000 and 225,000 of those people became (or will become) “long haulers.” Their illness did not fade after days or weeks. For many, it continued months later. Thus, our data obscure the tens or hundreds of thousands of Missourians living with long-term, chronic health issues resulting from their COVID-19 illness.
One of the complex parts of this human tragedy is wrapping your head around the sheer scale of this. It can be hard to visualize just how big these numbers are. Don’t forget that every one of these deaths and illnesses impacted our neighbors. They’re real people, not just entries on a spreadsheet. - Chris
COVID-19 by the Numbers
Total cases in MO: 845,884 (+10,504 from last Thursday)
7-day average of new cases per day in MO: 1,500.57 (-176.43 from last Thursday)
Counties with the highest per capita rates (per 100,000) of new cases per day this past week:
Hickory (91.5 per 100,000), New Madrid (77), Ripley (63.64), Bates (61.94), Wayne (54.75), Iron (53.11), and Bollinger (50.02)
Total deaths in MO: 12,382 (+203 from last Thursday)
7-day average of new deaths per day in MO: 29 (-0.71 from last Thursday)
Percent of all Missourians initiating vaccination: at least 49% (no change from last Thursday)
Percent of all Missourians completing vaccination: at least 44% (+1% from last Thursday)
Case and mortality numbers are current as of Wednesday, October 6th. Vaccination numbers are current as of Thursday, October 7th. Additional statistics, maps, and plots are available on my COVID-19 tracking site.
Trends in the Past Week
The best news of the week is that our statewide 7-day average of new cases has dropped from our recent peak by half. In early August, we saw the rate of new cases peak at 3,000 new cases per day. This number of new cases pales compared to what we saw in November 2020 but, never-the-less resulted in a significant number of new cases. From late May onward, we have added at least 232,518 new cases of COVID-19. These additions are slowing, however. For example, this week, we saw only 1,500 new cases.
It’s worth remembering that we were averaging just a third of our present number in late May - just below 500 new cases per day on average. It’s almost certain that these were our best rates of new cases of the entire pandemic since our early spring and summer 2020 are significantly affected by a lack of access to testing.
At the metro level, we have seen a significant decrease in each of Missouri’s urban areas. The best news is perhaps in Springfield, which was the first significant cluster of Delta variant cases in a city. Nearly four months later, the metro is slowly approaching its baseline, pre-Delta numbers.
The declines in Springfield are coming despite a county just outside of the metro, Hickory, experiencing a significant spike in new cases. Hickory’s cluster of new cases appears to be focused on the Sheriff’s Office, according to friend of the newsletter, Marie Ceselski, though information about the outbreak is sparse. Hickory’s spike is not just the worst in Missouri right now, but it rivals the magnitude of Hickory’s fall and winter 2020 spike.
Hickory is also the only county that in Missouri seeing a sharp uptick in new cases. The other high rates of new patients now exist primarily in rural counties of Missouri like Hickory. This is particularly true in the southeastern part of the state. New Madrid County anchors the most substantial cluster of new cases in the state, split among counties in the Bootheel, around Cape Girardeau, and into the Ozark Mountains.
In these counties, however, rates are elevated but slowly declining. Again, this trend is not dissimilar from what we see statewide and in our primary regions.