Here are the latest updates for those of you who want to see the data.
COVID by State
The most interesting thing to note from above is that the acceleration column (dIROC_confirmed) is getting larger in the top 15-20 states ranked by their Case Rates (IROC_confirmed). See my post from July 15 to see the difference. You’ll also note that the case rate is increasing pretty much across the board, but for most of the lower-ranked states, it’s a small increase. So where (which counties) are driving these increases?
COVID by County
So we’re continuing to see a large case rate in some rural Missouri and Arkansas counties. Nassau and Duval Counties in Florida have jumped onto the list. These two counties are both in the Jacksonville metro area. If you add Camden County, Georgia, (just north of Nassau county) into the mix, it looks like some sort of local spread event, perhaps. The outbreak might have begin in Camden County and worked it’s way down… This article from mid July indicates that only 28% of eligible people in Camden County had been vaccinated. This Jacksonville, multi-state metro area has an overall case rate and acceleration that might be driving much of the overall Florida numbers.
Therefore, I see basically three major local events in the top 20 or so counties: 1) Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma border area 2) Jacksonville, FL, metro area, and 3) Midland, TX (why?). This leads me to believe that this variant IS extremely transmissable — it has spread pretty quickly in these areas, but I believe these areas have relatively low vaccination rates.
Arizona COVID by County
Above is the data for Arizona as of 7/24. Here we see the bottom four counties in case rate (and all with pretty low accelerations too) along the border. Note in the NYT visualization below that Pima, Santa Cruz, and Coconino Counties all have pretty dark colors, i.e., high vaccination rates. Mohave, Pinal, Maricopa, Greenlee, and Yavapi Counties all have the lowest vaccination rates. This is similar to what we see above… the Delta variant seems to be growing fastest in low-vaccination areas. I’m not sure if this trend holds… things may change. But for now it does seem like Delta is very transmissable, but very localized (and possibly highly correlated with low-vaccination areas). And fortunately, as you can see, deaths remain very low as of this date.
Above you can see in my map of case rates and accelerations by counties there are a couple of large regions of outbreak. One hovers over the Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma border areas and the other hovers over Jacksonville and S. Georgia. This is a pretty good picture of how non-uniform the current COVID Delta Variant outbreak is. The outbreaks also appear to correlate strongly with the low vaccination (light green) areas on the NYT visualization.