New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown

The above shows the daily count of new Covid cases in New York state (blue) and the seven day centered moving average (orange).  The black line marks when the Governor issued his “PAUSE” (shutdown) order.  It continues to appear that around 12-14 days after that order, cases peaked and are now in a slow decline.

It peaked at around 50% (ignoring whatever caused that outlier at 75%) and has now declined into the mid thirties.  That suggests that a little more testing is happening relative to the size of the epidemic, and tends to confirm the idea that the slight decline in new cases is real.

There is no sign at all that we can exit lockdown any time soon.  To remove most of the lockdown measures, it would be good to have few cases (in the hundreds statewide), and be aggressively chasing them all down, testing all their contacts and confining anyone found positive or symptomatic.  That would imply a positive test ratio of 5% or less.

We would appear to be months away from these kinds of exit criteria on present trends.

One possible new factor is the governor’s order, taking effect yesterday, that everyone needs to wear masks anywhere social distancing may be imperfect.  We don’t know how well this will work in New York, but it’s at least possible it will cause another significant decline in the case volume.  We’ll find out in 12-14 days.

early warning