Massachusetts Data Update November 29, 2020

Well, I was wrong. I thought we’d have to wait for about another week to potentially see higher test positivity rates – at the last update four days ago, it appeared rates were headed down coming into the Thanksgiving holiday. But they bottomed last Monday, and have spiked significantly since then. This does not bode well for the coming weeks. (One note: since testing rates are based on the day the tests are performed rather than reported, they change as new test results come in and the dashboard updated. My November 25 update reported the 7 day newly tested positivity rate as 9.3% using data through November 24.   The 7 day rate for November 24th is now 9.9%).

In fact, every positivity rate is higher or the same as it was a week ago, with the exception of the higher education rate, which dropped slightly. However, the percentage of tests associated with higher education fell to about 31% from close to 45% four weeks ago – I’d expect the higher education testing percentages to remain at these levels or drop lower through at least the end of the year as college students begin to return home from fall classes. Since higher education has had the lowest positivity rate among the reported categories in Table 1, this will put upward pressure on the all test positivity rate and the repeat tester positivity rate as the testing mix changes.  The repeat tester positivity rate is at its highest level in over three months.

There had been a temporarily lull in the rate of increase in hospitalized patients; that is now over.  There have been over 1000 covid patients in Massachusetts hospitals for the past tow days, and the 7 day average is inching closer to 1000.  The average number of new admissions for the week ending November 24 is almost 20% higher than the previous week.  ICU and intubated patient averages have continued to rise as well – the 7 day average of number of intubated patients increased more than 35% week over week.

The average number of cases may be leveling off, but it is a bit too soon to tell if this is just a reporting artifact from Thanksgiving.  Given the higher positivity rates from Table 1, I’d guess this is just a lull. Deaths, as a lagging indicator, are continuing to tick up.