Weekly COVID-19 Round-up - 5/27/21
River City Data No. 33
Tonight’s newsletter has my usual breakdown of our top-line numbers and details on trends in infections in Missouri. I highlight our continued slowing vaccination rates and the serious spike in new cases we see in two rural regions in Missouri. - Chris
COVID-19 by the Numbers
Total cases in MO: 613,366 (+3,157 from last Thursday)
7-day average of new cases per day in MO: 451 (+31 from last Thursday)
Counties with the highest per capita rates (per 100,000) of new cases per day this past week and the only counties with per capita rates over 20:
Putnam (142.41 per 100,000), Linn (125.44), Livingston (121.29), Shelby (70.71), Dallas (37.23), Polk (24.9), Chariton (22.72), and Grundy (21.35)
Total deaths in MO: 9,652 (+102 from last Thursday)
7-day average of new deaths per day in MO: 14.57 (-11.57 from last Thursday)
Percent of all Missourians initiating vaccination: at least 37%
Percent of all Missourians completing vaccination: at least 30%
Case and mortality numbers are current as of Wednesday, May 26th. Vaccination numbers are current as of Thursday, May 27th. Additional statistics, maps, and plots are available on my COVID-19 tracking site.
Illness Trends in the Past Week
We are seeing the first real, significant surge of new cases since January. There are two pockets in Missouri where this resurgence in new cases is occurring - in Northern Missouri and an area just to the north of Springfield.
Both areas are rural and, as I’ll describe below, have middling vaccination rates. Together, these two areas are contributing to a rising overall 7-day average of new cases for Missouri. However, the rise is slight, partly because the increases in these areas, which are included in the “outstate” trend below, are being offset by continued declines in new case rates in both the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas.
The increase in new cases in Northern Missouri is more concerning both because the per capita rates are so much higher and because there are fewer hospital and ICU beds in this region. It is also concerning because both Linn and Putnam counties are not just seeing surges in the new cases; they are experiencing their highest per capita rates of new cases of the entire pandemic.
Livingston County is currently experiencing its second-highest spike in new cases since the pandemic began, and Shelby County is near all-time highs as well. However, these types of spikes are different from the prior spikes in rural counties I’ve documented this spring in terms of their magnitude - none have been so large or close to all-time highs for the county they’ve occurred in.
The spikes in Dallas and Polk counties are less concerning - the rates are well below their peak highs, especially in Polk County, and these counties benefit from nearby Springfield’s hospital capacity. That said, a regular reader let me know last week that Polk County’s Public Health agency has re-started daily updates because they are concerned about the trend.
In both regions, there are also neighboring counties that are seeing their trends tick upward as well. The news may be fantastic in the St. Louis and Kansas City regions, with hospitalization rates approaching new lows and limited numbers, but these shifts outstate towards significant numbers of new cases should give the entire state pause.
Vaccination Trends in the Past Week
Both of these areas of concern fall in the middle of our state’s county-level vaccination rates. They are not the lowest, which is largely counties in the Bootheel and the Ozarks as well as in Southwest Missouri. However, they lag behind counties along the I-70 corridor with the highest rates, especially around St. Louis, Columbia, and Kansas City.
This geographic distribution is particularly pronounced when we look at recent vaccinations. The overall pace of vaccinations has really slowed in Missouri, but it has remained highest in the same three urban areas that I highlighted above. Moreover, despite the recent spike in new cases, we are not seeing a rush of new individuals in those counties to go out and get vaccinated.
Another look at this slowing trend comes from my overall progress tracker, which has barely budged from last week. There was no meaningful increase in individuals completing vaccination this week and just a one percentage point increase in the number of people who have initiated vaccination.
I have not highlighted disparities in vaccinations in a few weeks and wanted to check in with those tonight. I wrote last week about whether we should include individuals living outside of Missouri in our state demographic breakdowns. I have revised my race and ethnicity plots accordingly, and so all of the per capita rates you may have seen before are not comparable. Asian and Pacific Islander individuals have initiated vaccination at the highest rates, along with Latinos. African Americans and Native Americans continue to have the lowest rates of vaccination initiation.
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