Monday, June 22, 2020

What is happening in North Carolina?

We have been working on using our model for North Carolina, where hospitalizations have been increasing consistently. We will be sharing a summary of our results soon with a paper but here are two figures which provide some idea as to what we see.
North Carolina is set to move to Phase 3 on June 26 but there is a possibility that Governor Cooper might decide to extend Phase 2. In the figure above, we are looking at three possibilities: the state moves to Phase 3 starting with June 26, stays at Phase 2, or moves back to Phase 1 until the end of the year. I do not think there is a serious possibility of going back to Phase 1 or staying in any one of the phases until the end of the year but they are useful for understanding the impact of different decisions. The figure strongly suggests that moving on to Phase 3 will be disastrous. In fact, even staying in Phase 2 will likely result in a significant increase in the number of deaths and hospitalizations peaking some time in Fall.

The figure above assumes a testing capacity of 30,000 per day, which is a little more than the maximum number of tests performed on a given day so far in North Carolina. If we double the testing capacity, it certainly helps but moving on to Phase 3 or staying on course in Phase 2 will again result in major increases in deaths and hospitalizations over the course of a few months. You can see that in the following figure.
 
More to come soon...

No comments:

Post a Comment

Can we flatten the curve in North Carolina?

Our paper on North Carolina is now available here . My last few posts essentially give a summary of the paper but all the details including ...