Though you wouldn’t know that from official pronouncements. Also, the data reporting is really… not good. D.C. isn’t really reporting daily test data by ward, so we lack context for the prevalence data (e.g., if a ward had 9 positives in a week, how many total tests were given). Also, the downloads being put out have a lot of inconsistencies: somehow, a couple of days ago, the total number of tests jumped by 30,000. Unfortunately, now is the time we need good data (when things are bad, it doesn’t really matter–things are bad). Here’s the last two weeks of data (n/a is not available):
| Ward | one-week prevalence | one-week % pos. | two-week prevalence | two-week % pos. |
| 1 | 0.010% | n/a | 0.010% | n/a |
| 2 | 0.000% | n/a | 0.001% | n/a |
| 3 | 0.001% | n/a | 0.005% | n/a |
| 4 | 0.008% | n/a | 0.015% | n/a |
| 5 | 0.019% | n/a | 0.032% | n/a |
| 6 | 0.011% | n/a | 0.020% | n/a |
| 7 | 0.011% | n/a | 0.023% | n/a |
| 8 | 0.045% | n/a | 0.066% | n/a |
| D.C. total | 0.013% | 1.1% | 0.022% | 0.7% |
The entire city and all wards are below the German rollback threshold of 50 new cases per 100,000 per week–which also is the threshold the CDC suggests schools for all grades can reopen (0.05% in the second column above). However, across D.C., the number of reported cases increased by sixty percent (not a typo). Wards 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8 saw large increases.
The ‘good place’, which is one new case per 100,000 people per day, would be 0.007% in column two and 0.014% in column four. In absolute terms, Wards 2 and 3 are at the good place, while Wards 1, 4, 5, and 6 are very close. Ward 8 is high. The ward level total tests administered data aren’t being updated, so I can’t say anything about the percent positive rate, other than it’s good city-wide (though see the caveat I mentioned above).
D.C. has had three deaths in the last week. As I noted last week:
While D.C. did surpass the Biden administration’s goal of having at least seventy percent of adults partially vaccinated yesterday, we still need more vaccination. It’s starting to look like not setting vaccination thresholds for reopening might have been a mistake. One reason Vermont is pulling together and getting vaccinated is that they rolled back restrictions based on vaccination levels. You know, incentives ‘n shit.
And we still seem to be two cities when it comes to infection and vaccination.
At some point, we’re going to have to consider stricter ‘incentives’ for vaccination.
I don’t like this new normal. Getting angry again.
mikethemadbiologist