Quote:
Originally Posted by The Gazette
As most Villagers know, The Villages spans through three different counties. Here are the number of new COVID cases as of Aug. 17, according to the CDC website. In Lake County, there have been about 293 new cases over the last week. About 17 of those cases were admitted to the hospital, and no deaths
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Patients with COVID
The patients with COVID metric is the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID patients.
Over 15%
10% - 14.9%
Under 10%
Sources and methodology
We source this metric directly from the CDC's community level dataset wherever possible, and calculate it ourselves using HHS provided data wherever CDC metric data isn't available. Generally, new county-level data is ingested from the CDC metrics, while all state-level data, and county-level data from before February 24th, 2022 is calculated using HHS data.
To calculate this metric for counties, we use data from the CDC, which uses data from the US Department of Health and Human Services Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System. To calculate this metric for metros, we aggregate the county data using a population-weighted average. To calculate this metric for states, we use data from the HHS to calculate the number of admissions over the last week and then normalize that by the state’s population.
Levels
Levels for percentage of patients with COVID are generally based on the CDC’s Community Level framework. Less than 10% of all new beds is considered Low, between 10 and 14.9% is considered Medium, and greater than or equal to 15 is considered High.
Limitations
County-level data are only reported once a week.
For counties, the data is based on the health service area the county is a part of. A county with no hospitals can still have data for this metric, based on the percent of beds with COVID-19 patients in other hospitals within the health service area.
Infection rate
Infection rate (also known as “R(t)”) is the estimated number of new people each COVID-positive person will infect.
Sources and methodology
This one is a bit complicated. To calculate the infection growth, a mathematical model combines trends in daily new cases from approximately the last 14 days, with estimates for other variables, such as how many days on average occur between infection and transmission.
An R(t) of 1.0 means that the daily new cases of COVID are stable, while an R(t) greater than 1.0 means that daily new cases are growing.
To calculate the infection rate, we use new positive cases from The New York Times.
Limitations
Because you can’t measure infection rate directly, our estimates hinge upon our epidemiological assumptions and the accuracy of our data sources.
Infection rate can only track COVID growth once a positive case gets reported through the system. By then, infectious individuals have likely been COVID positive for some time, so the metric will always lag the true infection rate in the community. For example, if someone was exposed over the holidays, they likely didn’t test positive until the new year.
Infection rate should be considered in context with the other metrics. Daily new cases refers to the number of new COVID infections, while the infection rate represents the trend. A place with high daily new cases may have an infection rate less than 1 and still have higher exposure than a place with relatively few, but growing, cases.
More information on infection rate
Why is infection rate important?