Weekly COVID-19 Round-up - 9/2/21
River City Data No. 46
This past week was a week of baby steps toward improvement. Compared to last week, which I called a “mixed bag,” we’re back to seeing decreases in most of Missouri (with some notable counties discussed below). In addition, hospitalizations appear to be at least temporarily peaking, which is great news.
It is so important to remember that these trends are not inevitable. If you Google the United Kingdom’s case rates over time, you’ll see that after falling from its initial Delta peak, the UK experienced another uptick in cases that coincided with the return of students to school. We have the tools to address this, including new research that confirms the effect of our original non-pharmaceutical interventions. I dive into that in the Into the Weeds section below. - Chris
COVID-19 by the Numbers
Total cases in MO: 777,545 (+16,051 from last Thursday)
7-day average of new cases per day in MO: 2,293 (-205.86 from last Thursday)
Counties with the highest per capita rates (per 100,000) of new cases per day this past week:
Carter (235.14 per 100,000), Scott (118.04), Reynolds (97.27), New Madrid (96.25), Lewis (82.63), Iron (79.67), Mississippi (78.97), Vernon (78.02), Ripley (77.2), and Stoddard (75.51)
Total deaths in MO: 11,303 (+237 from last Thursday)
7-day average of new deaths per day in MO: 33.86 (-1.43 from last Thursday)
Percent of all Missourians initiating vaccination: at least 47%
Percent of all Missourians completing vaccination: at least 41%
Case and mortality numbers are current as of Wednesday, September 1st. Vaccination numbers are current as of Thursday, September 2nd. Additional statistics, maps, and plots are available on my COVID-19 tracking site.
Illness Trends in the Past Week
The top-line numbers are most important tonight - statewide, we’re more than 700 new cases per day below where we were before. St. Louis continues to have the lowest regional per capita rate of new cases. The harder hit areas are now seeing significant declines from their peak, which is great news as well.
Folks may be disappointed that rates are not falling here in St. Louis, but I think the real victory is avoiding the steep surge in new cases that we saw (and, in a few cases, continue to see) in many parts of “Outstate” Missouri. As it is, the increase in cases we have experienced, modest though it may be, has still sent our hospitalization numbers up dramatically. Quick side note - if you want to get a sense of how our case data totally misrepresent how bad things were in the spring of 2020, compare the plot below with the St. Louis trend on the plot above, and try to fill in a spike in March and April that roughly follows what we saw in hospitalizations.
Had we seen an increase in new cases in the last month that was comparable to what our “Outstate” and Kansas City neighbors experienced, the hospitals in St. Louis would have been in far worse shape than they are now. I say that, but we should also acknowledge that even with these rates of hospitalizations, they’re coming when providers are feeling burned out and exhausted from almost eighteen months of this. St. Louis’s providers are in comparatively good shape, too. Take a look at where we are with hospitalizations in other metro areas - the share of COVID-19 patients has been higher in every other metro.
I am particularly concerned that Cape Girardeau’s rates will continue to climb. The highest rates of new cases are now squarely on the Bootheel and eastern parts of the Ozark Mountains, and this will have consequences for hospital capacity in both Cape Girardeau and St. Louis.
Carter County’s rise in new cases is superlative. No other county has seen a spike this high during our Delta wave, though Putnam County in Northern Missouri came close in late May and early June. In fact, no other county has seen a spike this high at any point in 2021. You have to go back into 2020 to find a county experiencing per capita rates of new cases of this magnitude that are not explained by data reporting anomalies.
In the intro, I mentioned that none of this was inevitable. We did not have to experience spikes like we have seen in Missouri over the past three months. We also should not assume that we are done with Delta. The UK experience makes it clear that declines afterward a peak of Delta variant cases should not just be assumed. In that context, we should not rest on our laurels and assume that the time non-pharmacentual interventions have passed. A renewed mask mandate in St. Louis County, for example, would be an investment in a healthier fall and continued stable rates of new cases.
Vaccination Trends in the Past Week
Non-pharmaceutical interventions are assets because our vaccination rates remain far too low. Even St. Louis and St. Charles counties, which are leading the state in terms of completing vaccinations, have barely cracked 50%. Down in hard-hit Carter County, less than a third of all residents have been fully vaccinated. There are Bootheel counties with even lower rates. So every vaccination we get now is, like renewed non-pharmaceutical interventions, an investment in reduced morbidity and mortality as the fall progresses.
Into the Weeds
Why am I harping on non-pharmaceutical interventions tonight? Not just because I believe in them, but because we have new science out from St. Louis that illustrates their significant impact on the first wave of COVID-19. The paper, which includes a couple of colleagues I’m really privileged to work with including a former student of mine from SLU, is already getting some well-deserved press. They find that, had non-pharmaceutical interventions been delayed by as little as two weeks at the very beginning of the pandemic, we would have seen as many as 8,000 more hospitalizations and 2,800 deaths. As I write this, I am struck by the magnitude of this and wonder how many lives we could have saved if we had acted with even greater urgency across Missouri in that first wave. Fast forward into our fall wave and then our Delta wave this year, and I wonder how many lives we could have saved if we had likewise treated them with the seriousness they deserved.
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