COVID numbers except deaths falling fast

By George Shaw

Summary

The numbers continue to go down rapidly for new cases and hospitalizations.  Although deaths in North Carolina have dropped for the past two weeks, they remain near record levels.  And deaths at the national and state level are likely to remain high for several additional weeks.

Wake County and our three zip codes also show significant reductions for new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.  TThere were no new deaths in our immediate area for the third week in a row.

United States

Reporting is slower than normal due to delays caused by President’s Day last Monday.  New cases are nearly as low as they were three months ago.  New cases were around 90,000 a day before Thanksgiving based on a seven-day average.  They averaged 820,000 daily on January 14 but have dropped to around 100,000 as of yesterday.

Daily deaths continue to average roughly 1,900 over the last week.  This is a decrease of around 15% over the last week and nearly 28% since the peak average at the end of January.

North Carolina

North Carolina has the 26th lowest number of cases among the states, sliding one spot since a week ago.  It remains the 12th lowest mortality rate and the 29th highest rate of tests per capita.

The mortality rate for our state and local areas continue to be significantly less than national figures.  The national rate is one death for every 358 residents as of yesterday.  The corresponding rate in our state is 1:475.  Mississippi has the highest mortality rate (1 in 248 residents); Vermont now has the lowest rate (1 in 1,102 residents) among all states.   Wake County’s rate of 1:1,142 is better than any of the states.  Zip Code 27587’s rate is 1:1,063, which is a lower mortality rate than all states except for Hawaii and Vermont.

Tests are down 68% since the recent record high.  The number of tests in our state peaked at 713,000 for the week ending January 12.  The figure for the last seven days is 228,000, a decrease of 20% in the last week.  This is the lowest weekly total since the seven days ending on December 1, 2021.

New cases reached a high of 217,000 in the week ending January 19.  The amount for the week ending today is 24,600 a decline of 20% over the last week.  The most recent period remains double the amount recorded just before Thanksgiving.

The record daily figure for hospitalizations was 5,206 on January 26.  This amount declined to 2,123 yesterday.  This represents a decline of 26% in the last week and an aggregate reduction of nearly 60%.

There were 422 deaths last week, down from the record of 578 set the prior week. This is a reduction of 13% in the last week. Despite double digits reductions in mortality for the last two weeks, the most recent figure remains four times the rate in late December.  Deaths will likely remain elevated through the end of February or early March.

Wake County, Wake Forest, Rolesville and Youngsville

There were 2,482 new cases in Wake County during the last week, a decline of 48% from the prior seven-day period.  This level was last reached in mid-December 2021.

The corresponding reductions were another 44% for Zip 27587 as well as 40% for Zip 27571 as well as 60% for Zip 27596.  The sharp reduction in Youngsville brought its level to what was last seen around Thanksgiving 2021.

Zip Code 27587 has had 22,734 cases of COVID-19 during the last two years.  This remains the second highest of any zip code in the state, trailing zip 27610 in Southeast Raleigh which has 24,189 cases.  However, our zip code had nearly three times the number of new cases during the last week.

Wake County topped 1,000 reported deaths from the virus, up ten in the last week.  There have been no additional deaths in our three zip codes over the last three weeks.

The Capital Region is an area of five counties centered on Wake County used by the state to aggregate data on data for hospitals.  The number of new hospitalizations peaked at 411 in our region on January 30.  It was 160 yesterday, a decrease of 20% in the last seven days.  The percentage of hospitalized patients in Intensive Care Units in our region increased from 22% a week ago to 26% yesterday.

The North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services listed four relatively recent outbreaks in our area yesterday.    Three of the facilities remain on the list – 27 residents and staff have tested positive at Hillside; 10 at Brookdale, six at Cadence.  Heritage High School has been deleted from the list, but the Wake Forest Montessori Preschool was added with seven reported cases.

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