The best news today comes from the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in Rhode Island.  The increase came very close to what my model was predicting, dropping the day-to-day growth to 2% and bringing the 14-day infection rate below one.  By way of reminder, that’s the threshold beneath which the disease is fading.

Of course, the number of total tests reported today was down, leaving open the possibility that the increase is only because the state didn’t do as much testing.  On the other hand, less testing could mean that fewer people needed to be tested, which is a positive.

As far as hospitalizations go, they continued to drop, although a little less precipitously than I projected.  The dotted line that I’ve added to the chart, by the way, represents the last day that the state was giving the public data on how many people were in the hospital because of COVID-19, rather than just testing positive for the disease while in the hospital for some other reason.

 

• Cases:
  • Projection for 5/3: 9,451
  • Actual for 5/3: 9,477
  • Projection for 5/4: 9,633
• Hospitalizations:
  • Projection for 5/3: 323
  • Actual for 5/3: 330
  • Projection for 5/4: 315
• Deaths:
  • Projection for 5/3: 301
  • Actual for 5/3: 320 (note that this includes revisions going back multiple days)
  • Projection for 5/4: 325