A brief look this morning at some data where I live. Here are some of the data for Riverside County since April 15
Daily New Cases
Daily New Deaths
So looking at a population like Riverside County can be challenging compared to larger centers around the country. There will inevitably be variations in the graphs because of a relatively smaller population and regional reporting characteristics.
What you probably can see is that there appears to be an overall decline in Daily New Cases in Riverside over the last several weeks. Most days in the last week are running under 100 new cases. It’s a general trend and there’s a lot of noise here so it’s difficult to draw any solid conclusions. One thing to note is the odd reporting on April 20. That day there were problems with the State’s data entry tool, CalREDIE. The 22nd made up for that when the system was working better but it’s probably more accurate to average those two days to something more like 122 and 123.
Similarly there appear to be changes in Daily New Deaths, the difference being an increase more recently. Again, all the caveats about sample size and variation are applicable here so we probably need to watch the data a bit longer to know for sure that the trends are true. But an increasing Daily New Death rate with a decreasing Daily New Case rate does tell us something. It’s possible that we’re at or maybe a bit past our peak for this wave of the infection in Riverside County. Typically, the deaths start to go up after peak which makes sense. If you have an increased number of people going into the hospital over a few days, they don’t generally die right away but within a week or two those that are most severe will die–hence, tragically deaths go up even though cases are going down. Further data over the next several weeks will likely tell us one way or the other. I’ll post updates in future days but keep an eye on those numbers. The easiest way to do that I’ve found is STAT’s COVID-19 tracker. You can view down to county level on this tool to monitor Daily New Cases and Daily New Deaths.
One other bit of news for Riverside before I go is that our doubling time has increased to 13 days! That starts to bring us in line with the State which is good news! I remember when we were doubling every 4.6 days and we (public health) longed for a doubling time in the double digits. Seems like a lifetime ago, I think it was a month.
CHRIS DAEL 