Rhode Island Could Be Reaching Peak Of COVID-19 Surge
PROVIDENCE, RI — Rhode Island's could be reaching the peak of its latest coronavirus pandemic surge, though the state is far from out of the woods just yet.
The latest weekly data from the Rhode Island Department of Health shows the first decline in case numbers and positivity rate since the end of November, although hospitalizations continue to climb.
The weekly percent positivity rate dropped by 2.5 percentage points over the last week, falling from 21.2 percent to 18.7 percent. That's still more than three times the "safe" threshold of 5 percent set by the department earlier in the pandemic.
Case numbers dropped over the past week, as well, falling slightly from 3,454 case per 100,000 people to 3,239.
As is often the case, hospitalizations did not follow case numbers, instead rising from 496 to 552. Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator, meaning they tend to rise or fall a week or two after the trend set by case numbers.
Rhode Island continues to routinely break several pandemic records in a week, with case numbers and hospitalizations far above the last-all time surge peak in Dec. 2020. On Jan. 12, 556 people were hospitalized, setting a new all-time record for the state and well exceeding last winter's peak of 505.
Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, the director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, explained recently that although omicron cases are generally less severe than previous coronavirus variants, there are two reasons the state has seen such as massive surge in recent weeks. Firstly, there were many delta cases in December, which drove up hospitalizations since it is more likely to cause severe illness. Secondly, omicron is extremely transmissible, meaning that as it became the dominant variant in the state, the sheer number of infections meant more overall hospitalizations.
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This article originally appeared on the Narragansett-South Kingstown Patch
