New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Expert: Cases could double by Jan.
It took eight months for Connecticut to reach 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. It might take just two months to double that.
“My speculation is that we will reach 200,000 cases by the New Year,” said Pedro Mendes, of the University of Connecticut’s Center for Quantitative Medicine.
There has been a significant increase in testing. There have been nearly 3.5 million coronavirus tests in Connecticut, an average of about 40,000 a day, up from an average of 6,000 a day back in June.
That increase in testing, according to Mendes, offers a more accurate picture of disease spread.
More testing provides
“an accurate estimate of how much spread is prevalent in the population when you test very large numbers,” he said by email. “This is particularly true when the number of tests is large, which is the case here.”
But Mendes, who has spent the pandemic modeling the spread of the disease in Connecticut, said when the state hits 200,000 cases depends on our holiday plans.
“We are still to see what is going to be the effect from Thanksgiving travel,” he said. “The problem with the model predictions at this point is that we have not yet collected enough data after Thanksgiving to estimate how much that is impacting the epidemic.”
Disregarding Thanksgiving, Mendes said “the model predicts that there would be a peak of hospitalizations by Dec. 15.”
But that’s when the effect those Thanksgiving family dinners had on the spread of COVID-19 will be felt.
“So it could be getting worse, actually, at that point in time,” Mendes said.
There are indications that Thanksgiving travel was down considerably this year. The two AAA clubs in Connecticut did an informal telephone survey, asking, “Are you traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday?”
“We found 89 percent of Connecticut residents surveyed said they would be staying home for the holiday,” said AAA spokeswoman Fran Mayko. “Of that number, 51 percent said they weren’t traveling because of COVID.”
Security screenings at airports have also been down, according to data maintained by the TSA.
The heaviest travel day since the pandemic began was Nov. 29, when 1.18 million passengers were screened at airports around the United States. Last year, there was more than double the traffic: 2.88 million passengers were screened at airports on
Nov. 29, 2019.
The Federal Highway Administration maintains data on vehicle miles traveled, but it has not released November’s numbers. Without specific numbers, Mendes and other disease modelers cannot tell with certainty when the numbers of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations will peak, or how high that peak might be.
Mendes said he had a good Thanksgiving, “in the sense that I stayed home and did not get any visitors. This year a good Thanksgiving is not to have contracted COVID-19.”
Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading epidemiologist, told CNN that Christmas might also have a significant impact on virus transmission.
“I think it could be even more of a challenge than what we saw with Thanksgiving,” Fauci said. “So I hope that people realize that and understand that, as difficult as this is, nobody wants to modify if not essentially shut down their holiday season, but we are in a very critical time in this country right now.”