Here are a couple of visualizations that give me hope that the hospitalization surge is easing… The below is from the AZ DHS Dashboard. Red bars represent the percent of ICU beds being used by a COVID Patient, Dark Grey are ICU beds in use by non-COVID patients, and Light Grey is available beds. Note how the last few days have seen a flattening of the COVID percentage. This is the behavior we noted as the first Arizona ICU bed surge happened in July.
See below for my own metric, percent hospitalized today compared to cases from one week ago. If you scroll down to a previous post, you’ll see that the over65 group was still trending up on this metric. About a week ago (when I first noticed the AZ DHS metric flattening) the over65 trend on my metric flattened and then started decreasing.
None of this is certain, of course, but maybe these are leading indicators that the virus is starting to run its course. Looking at the AZ Cumulative Case curve below, you can see that the current outbreak (which started in late October) is getting close to two months in duration. Since I’ve noticed in other states that non-linear case surges last about 2 months in states that enforce COVID protocols, perhaps we’re nearing the end of our winter surge?
