*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not
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Dear Editor,
Yesterday you published “Dozens of Local Doctors Issue Covid Update, As Cases Continue to Rise” where an impressive list of community doctors claimed after a quiet summer that COVID-19 “cases [are] on the rise.” Yesterday, a letter from a local shul was sent out claiming community leaders were made aware of “over 100 new cases have surfaced in the last 5 days alone in our local community.”
I hate to question these experts but this is not the reality I’m observing and thankfully, with the help of Newsday and their COVID tracking project (SEE HERE), we can now monitor data real time to better understand these claims.
More data is available for Nassau County where we are testing more people now than we had been testing earlier in the month (we tested 47,876 people in the last 7 days of August vs. 35,081 in the first 7 days of the month) and while our positive percentage is up slightly on a 7-day average basis from a low of 0.68% on August 13th, we are still below 1% (0.86% to be exact) and ended the month of August with 29 hospitalizations, 11 people in the ICU, and 4 deaths related to COVID in all of Nassau County.
For our community (defined here as Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Hewlett, Inwood, and Woodmere), it is hard to draw specific conclusions due to limited data other than to question the claim made about 100 new cases in the last 5 days as there have been 40 new cases in the past 8 days according to the published data with that coinciding with the aforementioned increased testing.
To be clear, I am not suggesting we be more cavalier in our approach to the virus or that we abandon mask wearing and social distancing. I am, however, asking community leaders to be more open and transparent about what they are seeing when they talk about rises and upticks. We’ve all been through a lot these past five and a half months and the anxiety and stress caused by these second wave warnings should not be discounted.
For those interested, please email [email protected] for daily updates on new Covid cases in our community.
Anonymous
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Doesn’t it take awhile for new cases to show up on reports (paperwork processing and reporting)? We’ll probably have to wait a week or so before any uptick would show up on final reporting media.