We moved our family from the US (Maryland, just in case you didn’t know yet) to Belgium - no big deal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in July-August 2020 - now we’re talking … I wrote this post to document our journey. We were (and still are) extremely privileged to have been able to do this, in the conditions we did it. The journey is not over. I’ll update and continue to document it until we fall back into something more “normal” … [long post]
Since the beginning of this pandemic, one metric intrigued many of us in Maryland: the cumulative number of people released from isolation. Initially (before the data release via API, when there was only the MDH dashboard), it was even thought to be the number of hospital patients released from isolation. It’s not: the API page mentions: Total Number Released from Isolation data layer is a collection of the statewide cumulative total of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 that have been reported each day by each local health department via the ESSENCE system as having been released from home isolation. As “recovery” can mean different things as people experience COVID-19 disease to varying degrees of severity, MDH reports on individuals released from isolation. “Released from isolation” refers to those who have met criteria and are well enough to be released from home isolation. Some of these individuals may have been hospitalized at some point. ...
I may have missed when the data was first released but I discovered the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) is publishing some data about COVID-19 contact tracing (in Maryland). This data is not on the main COVID-19 dashboard but on the contact tracing page (and in the datasets that can be downloaded). Here is a first insight of what happened so far … Note: if you just look for where to get tested in Maryland, the official information is here. ...
Every day, Governor Hogan and members of his team are communicating news on the COVID-19 situation in Maryland via Twitter (and other media): @GovLarryHogan, @riccimike, @katadhall, … (and of course: @MDHealthDept too!). A number of data enthusiasts are also parsing the MD Department of Health data: @TylerFogarty7, @MikeBReporter, @JauquetW, @PrayagGordy, … and of course: @jepoirrier) … And this is only on Twitter! But also every day, there is one thing that constantly changes: how everyone is calculating the COVID-19 positivity rate. Today (July 26), for instance, the different daily positivity rates announced are: 3.77% ( Hogan), 4.47% ( Hogan again in the same tweet, Hall, Ricci, MD Health Department, Fogarty) and ~6% (for me, the exact number behind the ~ is 6.14%). This doesn’t show the 7-days (or n-days) averages and other measures. And this is only on Twitter. ...
After my previous posts about age of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Maryland, it was logical that I write about the gender of these cases and deaths. Rest assured: this time, it will be much shorter ;-) Indeed, in a nutshell, in Maryland (like in the rest of the world), women are more impacted than men by the disease. But men are dying of the disease a little bit more than women. Note: this post was updated on July 15, 2020, to fix an error in my code! ...
After my previous post on the age of COVID-19 cases in Maryland, it was logical that I write about the age of COVID-19 deaths in Maryland. So far, media and State Departments of Health all agreed that the older someone is, the more risk this person has to die from coronavirus. So far, this is unfortunately also true in Maryland. In the graph below, we clearly see that people 50-59 years old have more than 250 deaths, people 60-69 have more than 500 deaths, people 70-79 have more than 750 deaths and people 80+ have nearly … 1,5000 deaths! The graph at the bottom also clearly shows that people in age categories 60 and above provide most of the new daily deaths due to COVID-19 (even if we came back down from a peak at about 40 deaths in 80+ at the end of April). ...
We recently heard in the US media that, if COVID-19 affected more the older population, beginning of 2020, the younger population was now more affected, especially young adults (various reasons were mentioned: the various academic breaks, being more active or “forced” to work, the sentiment of invincibility …). I wanted to see if one could see a similar trend in Maryland. If you look at the section of the Maryland population by age (graph below), as of today (July 9, 2020), you see that cumulatively, people 30-39 have the majority of cases, followed by people aged 40-49, 50-59 and 20-29 years old. There are relatively few cases above 70 years old and fewer cases below 20 years old. ...
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we suspected and saw that nursing homes and other facilities where people are grouped together (prisons, …) could be at higher risk of transmission. The focus on nursing homes was because deaths seem to disproportionately affect the older population that also resides there. And nursing homes are also home for frail people with comorbidities. In its dashboard, the Maryland Department of Health quickly started to build a dedicated page with numbers from different “congregate facility settings”. As I did for other metrics from this dashboard, I made a chart of what seemed the cumulative total cases, differentiating staff (who are stuck working there) and residents (who stuck living in these facilities): ...
The recent Black Live Matters protests made me think a lot - as a white man, as a husband and dad, as a biologist by training, as a health economist by day, as someone interested in COVID-19 data where I live by night … as a human, in summary. I don’t have grandiose pieces of advice or any deep thoughts, not for here (but if you call me, we can talk ;-)). Here, let’s continue our exploration of COVID-19 data in Maryland. ...
On its dashboard, the Maryland Department of Health is reporting confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 in two ways: by date of report and by date of death (updated as amendments to the death record are received). The definition of confirmed death is: A death is classified as confirmed if the person had a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test result. What I was intrigued is that reporting seems to follow a pattern influenced by the day of the week (see figure below). The top chart (cumulative) is just an addition. A plateau would be welcome: it would indicate death rate is slowing down. Today, the COVID-19 death rate is 41 / 100,000 population. The bottom chart shows the number of deaths due to COVID-19 reported each day: the black line represents the number of deaths each day they were reported; the grey line represents the number of deaths each day they occurred. ...