HARTFORD, Conn. — The state's COVID-19 test positivity rates since Friday might have some residents thinking that another winter surge of the virus is beginning.
Why? Despite a 14-day rolling average that has been under 2% for more than a month, the percentages climbed quickly in the last two reports.
On Monday, which covered all tests reported since Friday, the numbers showed that 2.57% of them came back positive. On Tuesday, covering tests reported Monday, the report showed a 3.23% positivity rate, which is the highest seen since mid-September.
However, while a winter surge could be starting, or at least imminent, as respiratory viruses like coronaviruses tend to flare up in cold weather, the positivity rates alone don’t show that’s happening.
The first thing to note about the unusually high 3.23% reported on Tuesday is that it was a Tuesday. For some reason, the reported percentages have been reliably higher on Tuesdays, which means they have been reliably lower on subsequent days.
However, Monday’s numbers were unusually high, too. Collectively, 2.71% of the tests reported on those two days came back positive, a rise from previous Monday/Tuesday combinations over roughly a full percentage point. What is behind that collective rise, then?
It’s not that there are more positive tests. Despite the wide disparity in test percentages, there was a grand total of only six more positive tests state-wide.
Even when compared to the Monday and Tuesday from two weeks ago, the rise was proportionately smaller.
The answer, then, is in the number of tests reported. Those declined by 30%, more than 20,000 tests, from just one week ago.
While the positivity rate alone doesn’t prove the winter surge is starting, there are some early signs that it may be.
The seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate has been trending up for the past nine days, rising from 1.64% to 2.16%. Hospitalizations also rose on Monday and Tuesday, jumping from 197 to 232. Granted, a two-day rise does not make a trend, but that possibility becomes much more likely if these rises persist through the rest of the week.
This week, Connecticut passed a milestone by surpassing 80% of the total population having gotten at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. The coming weeks will tell us just how much that level of vaccine uptake will blunt a second winter wave of COVID.
Tim Lammers is an anchor at FOX61 News. He can be reached at Tlammers@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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