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COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

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COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

Key Points:

Recommendations for Industry

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

In January and February, COVID-19 case rates were steadily decreasing. However, March rates have become flat with indications that rates are likely to start increasing due to two key factors:

  • Transmission of the variants are continuing to increase, becoming the predominant strains in some areas.
  • Some states are relaxing, or even completing eliminating, control requirements.

With these two key factors, TAG is not only continuing to recommend that businesses maintain all COVID protections – as we have for months, we are stating it louder and stronger, with an even higher level of urgency. Don’t relax your standards yet! You don’t need to increase them, just don’t reduce them – even if your state is.

TAG Risk Matrix.

Based on TAG’s matrices since last week:

  • The Government Stringency Index is 43 this week. It is lower than last week’s 46, indicating that there has been a decrease in government stringencies. This is reflected as states are opening back up. There are no states in the U.S. where businesses are completely closed. Eight (8) states’ (Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Oregon) businesses are in mixed opening stages.
  • Eight (8) states are in the Highest-Risk Quadrant (Outbreak Index > 50). This is up from 5 of last week. States in the High and Highest-Risk Quadrants are Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Texas.
  • In Figure 1, this week, we compare the case rate/100K (Table 1) in the population the to percentage of a state’s population that has been vaccinated (with first and second doses). Table 2 and 3 compare last week and this week’s percentage of states’ populations that have received their first and second vaccinations, respectively.

[Figure 1]

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

[Table 1]

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

[Table 2]

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

[Table 3]

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

  • Two (2) states have a TPR ≥10% and a case rate ≥ 25/100K people (Table 4). This is down from 3 states last week. This indicates that testing may not be adequate to fully characterize the true severity of the outbreak in the states. On the other hand, 7 states have a TPR < 10% and a case rate≥ 25/100K people indicates adequate testing that is likely finding most symptomatic cases of illnesses.

[Table 4]

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

  • In Figure 2, we compare the case rate/100K in the population to the number of COVID-19 tests administered and changes in Test Positive Rates

[Figure 2]

COVID Rates Have Plateaued, May Rise. Don’t Relax Your Protections!

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