Week 27's COVID-19 Report

Week 27:

I am here to present back-filled fatalities data to go along with the Weekly Texas Regional Cases results up through Week 27! While we have gotten past the surge, Weekly Case rates have not gone away. Instead, the state seems to be in a plateau regime that approximates numbers we saw last June during Phase 3. Please do not let your guard down. The pandemic is still spreading, albeit at a reduced rate.

Note that the Border region weekly fatalities (1.7M Total Population) are close to the Gulf Coast (3.7M total Population). This goes along with the higher case fatalities % presented last week for the Rio Grande Valley where per capita hospital staffing is lower than it is elsewhere in the state.

Finally, the last important point is that the peak in last Summer's Fatalities was within one week of peaks in reported Cases rather than the much longer 2-3 week lag period I presented in earlier posts. This new result is based on back-filling deaths according to death certificate dates. They show that Fatalities peaked during the 1st week of August; it took almost 8 weeks for enough backfill to get to a decent looking profile. Corky St Clair presented her results comparing the current practice vs. the previous reported date Weekly Fatalities profile.

Note that I am not plotting any data for Weeks 26 or 27. These are in the Medical Examiner's office for Evaluation. As we finish processing all of the data from last Summer's Surge, I would expect turnaround to improve.