Welcome to the third weekly report of COVID-19 in Verona. Although we are only on our third report (due to when data became available), COVID-19 has been around for quite awhile, and was declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020. I am aware that many of you are getting restless, anxious, and annoyed, and I completely sympathize with you. This situation is testing us all in many ways we have not been tested before. It’s tested our patience, self-control, and mental state, among other things. As of now, eight Verona residents have died and New Jersey remains “closed” until May 15. For the latest information on COVID-19 in New Jersey, you can do so by reading the official webpage here.
If you missed last week’s report, or want to refresh yourself on the findings, you can read it here.
As always, our data are provided to MyVeronaNJ by the Essex County Department of Health and Rehabilitation. Data comes to MyVeronaNJ as of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily. For the purposes of these reports, MyVeronaNJ will be using data available as of 5 p.m. for the days reported on.
Looking at Figures 1 and 2, we see the number of positive cases of COVID-19 for Verona and its immediate surrounding towns by number of positive cases and number of positive cases per one thousand residents, respectively. Montclair has continued to lead the week with the highest number of positive cases, which on April 12 was 237. Montclair finished the week with a cumulative total of 293 positive cases, representing an increase of 23%. Starting out the week with the lowest number of positive cases was Essex Fells having 15, and having a net increase of 6.67% over the week, finishing with 16 positive cases.
It is interesting to note that Essex Fells saw an increase in positive cases from April 12 to April 14 from 15 to 17 positive cases. It had a decrease from 17 to 15 positive cases from April 15 to 16, and then an additional case appeared on April 17, bringing the positive cases back up to 16. Essex Fells is the only town surrounding Verona to see such a fluctuation. Verona started the week out with 63 positive cases and finished with 81 cases, which is an increase of 28.57%. Last week, Verona saw a 28.3% increase in the number of positive cases.
Figure 2 shows a different picture and the changes from last week are quite interesting. In terms of number of positive cases per 1,000 residents, Cedar Grove surged into first having the highest ratio at the start of the week with a ratio of 10.636. Following Cedar Grove was West Caldwell with a ratio of 9.202. Verona started the week with the lowest ratio at 4.725, but finished second to last with a ratio of 6.076, behind North Caldwell which had a ratio of 5.499. North Caldwell started the week with a ratio of 4.852.
Lastly, one more important graph to look at is how Verona is stacking up against Newark, one of the Essex County cities that has been hardest hit by COVID-19. In Figure 3, the number of positive cases in each city is graphed, and as can be seen, Newark continues to have a much higher cumulative number of positive cases than Verona. On April 12, Newark had 2,722 positive cases while Verona only had 63. On April 18, Newark had 3,752 positive cases while Verona had 89. Newark saw a 37.84% increase in its cumulative positive cases. In terms of the number of positive cases per 1,000 cases, the gap between Verona and Newark has widened for this week. Newark started out the week having a ratio of 9.822 positive cases per 1,000 residents, while Verona started at 4.725. By the end of the week, Newark finished with a ratio of 13.538 whereas Verona finished with a ratio of 6.076.
Just like last week reminded us to not forget about the good, this holds true this week. As of April 18, there were 6,912 tests that came back negative across all of Essex County, and hopefully we will see this number increase as more people are tested. Also, Verona is still doing well and if we continue to take precautions, hopefully we can exit this sooner than later!
Check back next Tuesday, April 28 for the next report covering April 19 – April 25. As always, if there is anything you’d like to see just let me know!
