A Good Week as Pandemics Go

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COURT HOUSE – This past week, Cape May County reported 66 new COVID-19 cases, with 46 among county residents and 20 among non-residents. The numbers are enough to realize that the virus is still here.
A piece of good news was that only one of the new resident cases was in a long-term care facility. These congregate living locations, with individuals most vulnerable to serious complications, managed to shut down significant spread of the virus.
While some who contracted the virus are young people convinced of their invincibility and rashly flaunting health protocols, others are individuals who tried hard not to get infected. Herald readers wrote to point to the myriad ways the virus can circulate.
One parent reported their son, “a positive resident case in Middle,” worked at a summer job on one of the islands, wore his mask, and took all the precautions to avoid contracting the virus. They said their daughter quit her summer job for fear of exposure.
A second homeowner from a “COVID hotspot” came to her shore home in the spring “obsessed” with protecting herself. She described the locals on her block as engaging in unprotected socializing, with a mindset that it is the “shoobies” that one had to avoid.
Another wrote of a restaurant where a server tested positive. Co-workers told to quarantine and protected by the privacy of their medical records showed up at other restaurants, instead, where staff shortages produced alternative employment.  
Still, the non-resident spikes that characterized the early part of July appear to have subsided for now. COVID-19 hospitalizations are low. This past week saw one additional fatality. The virus is still with us, but it is in a phase of, what Covid Act Now terms, “slow disease growth.”
Health officials continue to preach the value of robust testing capabilities and quick contact tracing. The state announced the imminent capacity for 30,000 rapid response tests per day from Rutgers’ RUCDR Infinite Biologics. 
The state Health Department reported an award for contact tracing personnel to help local health departments. This was also a week when school districts wrestled with reopening plans, the next big test of the state’s ability to coexist with the virus while waiting for a vaccine.  
This was a week that told little about where to go from here. There were enough new cases to demand continued vigilance and worry, and not enough to cause a change in direction from what’s being done.
How People Know
Members of the public are working with the least useful of metrics – the trend in new cases. There are no county-level reports on testing volume or turnaround time, or the relationship of positive test results to total testing on a given day, called the positivity rate. 
The rate of transmission (Rt) of the virus in the county is unknown, even as the governor reminds daily that the Rt must be kept below 1.0, a measure of how many additional infections one can expect from a new case.
The county has come through July, with a few days to go, with 424 confirmed cases for the month. The cases were almost evenly split between residents (204) and non-residents (224). 
That’s more cases that the county had in any one month since the first case was reported in March. There are also more people in the county than in any month since March, probably by a factor of four or five. 
Case counts alone will not tell if this is good or bad. It is unknown that a large number of cases from early in the month were removed from quarantine. 
In July, 130 county residents who tested positive for the virus were removed from quarantine. The same was true for 147 of the 224 non-residents. That is about the best the public can do with raw cases counts as evidence. 
Uncertainties are many, public information is limited, and the public is at a point of relative calm in what is known of the virus’ spread. 
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.