5 Major Coronavirus Developments — RI On Pace for 250 or More Deaths By End of Year
Thursday, November 19, 2020
From November 6 to the 18 — less than two weeks of similar testing, new daily coronavirus cases in Rhode Island jumped from 630 cases to 1,280 and hospitalizations increased 51% jumping from 187 to 284.
This pace will exhaust hospital capacities in three weeks at this rate of increase.
"If you compare [Tuesday] to about five days ago and the last time we tested the same number of people — we tested 18,000 people over the last 24 hours, we got about 1280 positives — when we got to that number last time we got to about 900 positives — that suggests we’ve had 30% growth and spread in 5 days," said Dr. Michael Fine, the former Rhode Island Director of Health.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTData from Covid ActNow shows that RI's rate of increase is nearly a straight upward arrow since mid-September.
Unchecked Spread
"As far as I’m concerned this is now unchecked spread," said Fine on GoLocal LIVE on Wednesday. "And you can see this thing marching exponentially through the exposed population over the next four to twelve weeks. There’s nothing controlling it at the moment unless we do something substantially different that we’ve done before."
"We now have 284 people in the hospital - that went up almost ten percent in 24 hours," said Fine. "So that means the hospital numbers are likely to be doubling every ten days, and that’s going to get faster based on the rate of spread in the community."
Deaths
Fine anticipates that deaths in Rhode Island maybe far greater than an additional 250 by the end of the year. He estimates the number of deaths will be more than 400.
"There were six more deaths — [now] 1,284 deaths altogether. I would expect that within a week we’ll be seeing ten to twenty deaths every single day. This is unchecked spread of disease," he said.
"The guy who fixes cars — my friend around the corner — picked up the virus and spread it to his family, when he drove a car that had been dropped off by someone who was infected and had ridden in a few hours before. That’s how easy it was. It took him seven days to get the results of his test and by the time he got the result his whole family had it," said Fine.
Time to Change Strategy
Fine says RI's strategy is broken. Last week, Fine said it is time to stop contract tracing and shift those resources.
"That’s where we’re at with everybody. Basically this spreads unchecked unless we do something different. Let me tell you, the things that we need to do differently now in my view is to stop having people working in factories because the moment you have people working in factories you’re basically saying that working people don’t count — that we don’t care if they get infected. So places like Central Falls, Providence, Pawtucket are going to get creamed — they’re going to get creamed more and harder," added Fine.
"Obviously — I’ve said before — this is the moment to close bars and restaurants for inside dining and to make sure that everybody who does that is made whole economically. It’s just not fair to people to have their livelihoods taken away if they can’t be made whole economically, if there are people who have different circumstances and can work at home and are making their salaries with what they used to do. If you aren’t going to do that, people aren’t going to stay home," said Fine.
Related Slideshow: 5 Major Coronavirus Developments — RI On Pace for 250 or More Deaths By End of the Year
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