Hey, there! Log in / Register
Covid-19 clusters most common in households, according to state data
By adamg on Fri, 10/30/2020 - 9:33am
WBUR takes a look at the state's new data on how Covid-19 is spreading and finds that for all the social-gathering cases, it's really in small batches in households that are helping the virus get around:
Many people may let their guard down at home, for example. But the number of cases with a shared address suggests the need for masks and physical distancing if you live with an older person or someone who is more vulnerable to the virus.
See the data for yourself - scroll down past all the city and town numbers for the cluster info (this report is updated weekly here - scroll down for COVID-19 Weekly Public Health Report).
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
I did social distancing last night...
Closed a door and chilled in the tiny kitchenette next to the office. My supervisor called out where you at? And I said I'm self isolating. :)
Yes but it can only spread
Yes but it can only spread inside a house if it is introduced to that house. If the bubbles do not overlap then you are fine.
I live alone. In some ways it is amazing because I have complete control of everything around me. I can set up modular areas in my home to protect myself. At this point I almost even have cloths I wear inside the house and those I wear outside, at some point I may make this official. I am so careful, I could be on the magazine for careful Covid19 living. Yet I think of the prospect of living with other people and I see these new guidelines about wearing masks indoors with family and keeping distant within the indoor unit. I fully get and understand the science but I just do not think I could handle it.
The only thing that keeps me from going insane while outside , keeping distant, wearing masks, cleaning hands like crazy is the knowledge that I will be home soon. That I can just rip off the outer shell of life and live in a fantasy land of Hepa treated air and sprayed down objects. If I had to go through airlocks to get in and then still put on protective garb I just don't know if I could keep that up for long.
Covid-19 can spread rapidly in any large gathering.
Covid-19 can spread quite rapidly as a result of any type of large gatherings of people, and not just in households, either. It can be indoors or outdoors, especially when people either refuse to either wear masks and social distance, or wear their masks around their necks or right below their noses.
The fact that it's getting colder, winter is around the corner, and that more and more people are spending their time indoors is also giving the Covid-19 virus much more opportunity to spread, as well.
Tracing not always accurate because people are nervous
Some workers at certain workplaces are fearful about being fully candid- I know one Immigrant at a north end restaurant reluctant to be fully candid about where he thought he got the virus (work). His lack of candor was fueled by his immigration status and ire of his employer, a vocal opponent of the Covid restrictions.
"A vocal opponent of the Covid restrictions..."
Misspelled Monica's.
Might as well call out the dissonance to public health where it is.
Would the restaurant
be of a family chain that has a location in E Boston as well?
Household clusters
I'm new to this type of data so I have questions on how this is counted:
It seems like a high likelihood that if someone in a household gets COVID, others in that household will as well. So for the cluster data, if the first person was presumably exposed at child care for example, are they counted in both the child care and household clusters? And if they can't determine where the first person in the household was infected, is that really just an unknown that ends up in the count of household clusters? Which could make the data look more complete than it is.
That's a strange way to describe it.
Once it's in a house, it's pretty unreasonable to expect it not to spread to others in the household. This is entirely unsurprising and almost entirely unactionable.
The real question is where people are picking it up *outside* the household.
Good news
It's great the state is doing this and we can only hope the data improve as we get experienced collecting this type of information and as time goes on even find out WHY.
BTW, the city's chief of health & human services said that Boston will start releasing cluster data next week, on a bi-weekly basis. That's good.
Now we need them to release data by ZIP code.