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 SPREAD COUNTYWIDE IS BEHIND LAST OCTOBER 887 to 1463

WPCNR CORONAVIRUS SURVEILLANCE. Data from NY State Covid Tracker. Observation & Analysis by John F. Bailey.October 11, 2023:

Editor’s Note: The 3-day lag of the NY Department of Health in reporting covid cases continues disrupt daily ebbs and flows of the covid cases in but nevertheless the lag is all WPCNR can use to monitor how effective the people of Westchester are in lowering the disease effect on the county.

Westchester held Covid down for the second straight week, through October 1-7, reporting 887 new persons coming down with covid, down from 1,081 the previous week.

Sunday through Saturday last week, the number of new covid cases were, 109 Sunday, 220, Monday, 175 Tuesday,126 Wednesday, tapering off at the close of the week to  124 Thursday, 96 Friday and 37 Saturday. Westchester averaged  125 cases a day  positive covid PCR test positives were 610 compared to 277 Antigen Test positives, lab-tested antigen positives accounting for 45% of the positives.

This shows in my opinion that persons coming down with symptoms are going to confirm positive tests, indicating that the disease is still active and dangerous. Completion of vaccinations and acquisition of booster shots perhaps will prevent more covid in the future.

At White Plains Hospital last week, admissions from  last week from October 2 to 6 were 77 admitted to White Plains hoapital beds and 69 were found after admission to have covid or 89%. That is the highest percentage since last January. The hospital has been averaging 50 to 60% of new admissions to beds also testing positive for covid.

In comparison to October 22 hospitalizations for the same week  Oct 3 to 7, there were 116 admissions to beds, with 86  found testing positive with covid. This is a lower rate of covid cases entering the White Plains Hospital beds this month but still approaching the hospitalizations for covid of October a year ago which had more admissions but a lower covid percentage (74%). We do not know how serious the covid cases were or are, mild,symptomatic, or deserving treatment.

But 89% is very high for  White Plains Hospital last week. It means either people are not testing before they go in for a procedure which you are supposed to do. Since the positives are found by the hospital, this can only mean they wanted the procedure they were going in for and did not want to monitor their covid condition. I take this to mean the “back to normal mindset” of not taking covid precautions is infecting more of the population.

Compared to last October, Westchester population has in the first were as  of October 2023,  887 new cases. The first week of October 2022, Westchester had 1,483, 40% lower cases. Our ability to lower covid is better.

Last week, Westchester averaged 13.5 new cases per 100,000 people. 13.5 times 10,04, (1,004,000 county  population) is 135 new infections a day times 7 is 945 a week, x 4 weeks is 3,780 infections for October at our present rate of cases per day.

In October 2022, there were 4,563 infections. Westchester is  infecting 17% LESS. This is good, if the schools do not spread the covid virus, and we have way of knowing what the schools new cases are  across the county, because the Stated Edcucation Department no longer requires them to report covid cases. I think that decision does not make sense.

Last year 2021-2022, there were 138,183 students in Westchester Public Schools. If 2% of them test positive for covid and the schools do not catch you may have 2,763 students spreading covid in the schools. If 5% test positive you may experience a 7,000 student population spreading a faster spreading series of variants faster — especially if the school age population is not fully  vaccinated (another thing not required by the State Education Department).

The danger of not reporting covid positives, the unfathomable decision not to test students daily, require social distancing adds to the possibility of the school lack of covid awareness having even higher spreads.

I felt the protocols of last year played a large part in getting covid numbers down by May of this year, but since then the numbers have gone for 10 of 12 weeks since July.