Tuesday, July 14, 2020

July 14 - COVID-19 in Westchester County, NY

This is my last COVID blog-post...... I hope.

It has been over four months since the start of the 'Containment Zone' in New Rochelle. It has been 49 days since the start of Phase I of  reopening Westchester. If you stare at the data, no action taken in the last 2 months is affecting the trajectory of deaths, cases, or percent testing positive. They have been at a steady value since the middle of May.

Almost one third of the population of Westchester has been tested. The number infected in Westchester has not been determined recently, but the prevalance of the antibody in previous studies was about 15%.  That is supposedly not high enough to bestow herd immunity on the region, but the data indicates that there is enough immunity to contain the epidemic with current practices.  Loosening practices over the last two months has not worsened the infection rate.

Despite hand-wringing in other metropolitan areas over increased cases and hospitalizations, this has not happened in NYC or its adjoining counties (Westchester).  This is unlikely due to better social distancing in NYC versus other metro areas.  It is more likely due to the level of immunity.

The four plots below show how the four metrics I track have not changed in the last 2 months:
1) New Cases versus a comparable region in Italy (Bergamo)
2) New Cases versus NYC and Nassau County (weekly noise filtered out)
3) Percent of Westchester testing positive (unfiltered)
4) Daily Deaths in Westchester







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