Last Thursday, the Vermont Department of Health reported 496 Covid cases, breaking the one-day case record by roughly 100 cases.
This Thursday, Vermont did it again.
The state reported 591 Covid cases, shattering the record set last week. That raised the seven-day case average to 323 cases per day, almost double the seven-day average from early October.
Franklin, Lamoille and Rutland counties hit all-time records in their one-day case counts. Addison and Chittenden counties reported their highest one-day totals since the beginning of the Delta surge.
Anne Sosin, a health policy researcher at Dartmouth College, said she was “shocked” by the one-day case record but felt that the general trend of rising numbers was “predictable and preventable.”
“We went into Halloween, the inflection point for last year’s surge, with a very high case count,” she said. “And there are a lot of factors that … should have led us to project an increase: We’re seeing increased population mobility, a return to work, more travel, (and) coming holidays.”
She said there has been strong evidence since this summer that Vermont needs to adjust its course and move beyond the vaccine-only strategy for fighting the pandemic. “We need some evidence-based public health strategies in place, like … a data-driven mask policy.”
She said she also thinks “Many Vermonters (have) done everything that’s been asked of them and they really don’t appreciate the risk to them and their families. And so we need our leadership to very clearly communicate the current risk.”
On Tuesday, Scott responded to criticism of the state’s current approach, saying there isn’t enough evidence to show a mask mandate would be effective and that a state of emergency was too restrictive.
Record positivity rate and other metrics
The seven-day positive rate for the state — the percentage of PCR tests in the last seven days that were positive for Covid-19 — hit 4.1%, the highest level since April 2020, when the state was conducting only a couple of hundred tests per day.
The state reported 13,822 new tests on Thursday, by comparison. That’s higher than in the past few days, but lower than the more than 18,000 tests conducted last Thursday.
In the past, Vermont officials have used the positivity rate as a metric to understand how well Vermont was faring in battling the virus. In spring 2020, the state set a positivity rate of below 5% as one of its “reopening benchmarks” that would indicate it was safe to loosen restrictions.
How are the other reopening benchmarks from that time faring? Vermont stopped tracking one of those metrics — surveillance of Covid-like symptoms in medical settings — earlier this year.
Another metric officials used, and continue to publish, is the viral growth rate, or how fast the cumulative case count is growing from day to day.
The viral growth rate has risen in the past two weeks, from 0.55% on October 29 to 0.77% on Thursday. But it does remain lower than it was in early 2021, according to Department of Health data.
Although officials never published a specific benchmark, they said a “warning flag” would be if the growth rate showed “sustained viral growth that would lead to <30% of open ICU beds” because of a rise in cases leading to higher hospitalizations and ICU stays.
Another of the state’s reopening metrics has changed in outlook significantly since it was first published in spring 2020. At the time, officials said that ICU capacity should remain below 70% of available beds, including both Covid and non-Covid patients.
It’s hard to say exactly when, but Vermont has been exceeding that level for months. Even as the state was reopening its economy in early June, and few patients were hospitalized for Covid, ICU capacity was above 70% from non-Covid patients, according to Department of Financial Regulation data.
But the rise of Covid, combined with an influx of patients with mental health issues and chronic illnesses, has been straining ICU capacity even further during the Delta surge.
As of Thursday, 53 patients were in the hospital with Covid, including 14 in the ICU.
On Tuesday, Gov. Phil Scott said there were some days lately where only 10 ICU beds were open in the entire state.
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