And miles and miles to go. obviously no wards are below the German rollback threshold of 50 new cases per 100,000 per week–which also is the moderate threshold the CDC uses (0.05% in the second column below; n/a is not available):
| Ward | one-week prevalence | one-week % pos. | two-week prevalence | two-week % pos. |
| 1 | 0.871% | n/a | 2.032% | n/a |
| 2 | 0.930% | n/a | 2.190% | n/a |
| 3 | 0.871% | n/a | 2.036% | n/a |
| 4 | 1.264% | n/a | 3.189% | n/a |
| 5 | 1.189% | n/a | 3.163% | n/a |
| 6 | 1.046% | n/a | 2.558% | n/a |
| 7 | 1.206% | n/a | 3.171% | n/a |
| 8 | 1.260% | n/a | 3.438% | n/a |
| D.C. total | 1.131% | 17.9% | 2.818% | 18.8% |
Most wards in D.C. had large declines, with the exception of Ward 2 which had a thirty percent increase. The entire city had another 33% decline. There were far fewer self-reported positives because the back-to-school testing didn’t happen this week, but with those tests that decline shrinks to twenty percent. In addition, the self-reported positives aren’t broken out by ward, so we have no idea to which ward those tests belong.
COVID ICU patients have leveled off, but are still very high, and D.C. has had 23 deaths in the last week. As we noted last week:
Also, given the limited protection two doses provides against infection and that less than thirty percent of those with two doses have had a third dose, it’s likely that transmission will keep going for a while–and you really can protect yourself from infection* by getting the third dose (the booster) and wearing a good mask.
You also can get free, at-home antigen tests at D.C. public libraries, and the online federal site is now up and running. We also need free distribution of good masks.
Rage is the appropriate emotion.
mikethemadbiologist