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Rates of new Coronavirus cases continue to drop. California, which went from being one of the best states in the U.S. for low case rates, to being one of the worst during the holiday surge, is now back to mid-pack (per The New York Times "Coronavirus in the U.S.", retrieved 16 Feb 2021).
California's 7-day average of new cases from yesterday (15 Feb) is just one-fifth what it was during the holiday surge. Even so, that only puts us back to where we were in mid-November, and even that is double the rate seen in late September and early October. Not coincidentally that's the last time we traveled more than 35 miles from home and stayed anywhere overnight.
The downward trend of cases in California is mirrored by the US case rate.
Nationwide, the drop is not quite as pronounced but it's still there. The latest US 7-day average is one-third of the post-holiday peak. Even so it remains higher than the summer surge in July and August.
Do these lower new case rates mean it's time to get back to normal? Hardly. They're still too high! Here in California, for example, most of the state is still in the highest risk tier, Purple (per today's update of a state government site, Tracking Covid-19 in California):
You can see in the chart's legend that while 6 counties are now in lower risk tiers lower, their combined population is just 0.2% of the state.
What does it take to get out of Purple Tier? The state considers a few metrics in making the tier assignments. A key one is the daily new case rate per 100,000 population. Note the chart shows it is 24.2. (That's actually a statistic current as of a week ago. The state made a purposeful decision to use delayed data. The latest figure, per the New York Times, above, is about 21.) Well, what would it take to drop from Purple to merely Code Red? That daily case rate figure would need to drop by more than half.
California's 7-day average of new cases from yesterday (15 Feb) is just one-fifth what it was during the holiday surge. Even so, that only puts us back to where we were in mid-November, and even that is double the rate seen in late September and early October. Not coincidentally that's the last time we traveled more than 35 miles from home and stayed anywhere overnight.
The downward trend of cases in California is mirrored by the US case rate.
Nationwide, the drop is not quite as pronounced but it's still there. The latest US 7-day average is one-third of the post-holiday peak. Even so it remains higher than the summer surge in July and August.
Do these lower new case rates mean it's time to get back to normal? Hardly. They're still too high! Here in California, for example, most of the state is still in the highest risk tier, Purple (per today's update of a state government site, Tracking Covid-19 in California):
You can see in the chart's legend that while 6 counties are now in lower risk tiers lower, their combined population is just 0.2% of the state.
What does it take to get out of Purple Tier? The state considers a few metrics in making the tier assignments. A key one is the daily new case rate per 100,000 population. Note the chart shows it is 24.2. (That's actually a statistic current as of a week ago. The state made a purposeful decision to use delayed data. The latest figure, per the New York Times, above, is about 21.) Well, what would it take to drop from Purple to merely Code Red? That daily case rate figure would need to drop by more than half.
