A federal report calling San Bernardino County one of three U.S. coronavirus hot spots and suggesting the rate of spread doubled in the past week doesn’t line up at all with the county’s records.
County officials say they haven’t seen the report, which was created by the Department of Homeland Security and provided to Yahoo News by one of its recipients under the condition that that recipient not be identified.
But the picture painted by the portions quoted in Yahoo News’ report is contradicted by numbers the county has maintained and updated publicly nearly every day since shortly after the county confirmed its first case of COVID-19.
“The numbers they have are completely insane,” county spokesman David Wert said Saturday, May 16.
The document dated Friday states that San Bernardino County “reported an increase of 782 cases in the last 7 days, nearly doubling new cases reported in the previous 7 days. County officials recently began Phase II of the county’s reopening plan, lifting requirements for mask use on 8 May,” according to the Yahoo report.
It’s not clear from the limited excerpts which seven days are referenced. But as of Saturday, May 16, San Bernardino County has 3,463 confirmed cases — 561 more than it had seven days earlier — according to a dashboard on the county public health website. The week before that — May 2 to May 9 — saw 720 new cases.
And the week of April 25 to May 2 recorded 450 new cases.
So there was a spike, but the percentage of positive tests dropped as the county drastically increased the number of tests it gave. The county of 2.1 million has now tested 38,103 people, with 9.1% of them testing positive.
“We increased the number of tests six-fold, so of course the number of positives went up,” Wert said.
In the past seven days, the number of people tested rose by almost 27%, while the number of cases rose more than 19%.
The disease’s slowdown can be seen in the doubling rate, or the time it takes for the number of cases to double.
That’s now at 13.4 days, compared to 12.1 days on Saturday, May 9, and 10.4 days one week earlier — a sign that the virus is spreading less quickly over time.
The federal report mentions three counties — San Bernardino, Palm Beach County in Florida and Marshall County in Alabama.
“As most states have begun phased re-opening, several COVID-19 hot spots continue to emerge,” it says.
The numbers for Palm Beach County are also “way off,” according to a story in the Palm Beach Post.
“Palm Beach County, FL reported a 71% increase in new cases the last 7 days compared to the previous 7 days,” Yahoo reported, quoting the document. But, according to the Post, Palm Beach County has not had a weeklong increase of 71% since early April, when case numbers were far lower and increases resulted in a larger percent change.
Nonetheless, the number of confirmed cases in San Bernardino County continues to rise rapidly.
Symptoms of novel coronavirus can appear two to 14 days after exposure, or someone could spread the virus without showing symptoms.
The number of people who died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is now at 155, up by five deaths or 3.3% from the deaths reported Friday, May 15, according to the county’s online dashboard.
"behind" - Google News
May 17, 2020 at 08:15AM
https://ift.tt/3g5M9oe
Official: Stats behind San Bernardino County coronavirus ‘hot spot’ report are ‘insane’ - San Bernardino County Sun
"behind" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YqUhZP
https://ift.tt/2yko4c8
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Official: Stats behind San Bernardino County coronavirus ‘hot spot’ report are ‘insane’ - San Bernardino County Sun"
Post a Comment