Here’s another milestone with today’s COVID-19 data release from the RI Dept. of Health:  Hospitalizations (lagging case and death data by two days) fell below 10 newly admitted patients for the first time since the end of March.  Remember that this includes people admitted for other reasons but testing positive for COVID-19, as well.  That brings people in Rhode Island hospitals down to its lowest number since April 9th.

Turning to fatalities, the daily toll yesterday continued the streak below 10.  And for total cases recorded, the 14-day infection rate fell below 20%, meaning, basically, that every five people who had the illness two weeks ago infected only one person between them.

(See here for my original methodology and here for a subsequent modification I made.)

Projections versus actuals (date of report).

• Cases:
  • Projection for 5/27: 14,314
  • Actual for 5/27: 14,353
  • Projection for 5/28: 14,449
• Hospitalizations:
  • Projection for 5/27: 219
  • Actual for 5/27: 218
  • Projection for 5/28: 212
• Deaths:
  • Projection for 5/27: 639
  • Actual for 5/27: 655
  • Projection for 5/28: 659

Note that the Dept. of Health revises numbers going back days, so for example, the actual number of deaths may be 16 higher than projected, but that doesn’t mean that many more people died in one day.  Rather, it can mean that the baseline from which the projection was made turned out to be higher.