Short post today.
Numbers are down, which means the lockdown worked – pretty dramatically well, in fact. Whatever Easter spike there may have been was totally overwhelmed by the drop in cases due to lockdown. Testing surged from about 20000 per day to about 30000 per day, but despite this, reported cases are *still* down. So I have to conclude that the lockdown was way, way more effective than I had predicted it would be. Which is great news.
I think we will continue to see benefits of the lockdown into next week, so I expect numbers to be down again. But then two weeks from now I’d expect them to stabilize or maybe rise.
Numbers and Analysis
4551 cases reported in Tbilisi this week – that’s down from 5567 last week (but remember that last week was definitely a massive undercount due to lack of testing). My model had forecast a low of 5141, so we’re pretty well below my lower end prediction and outside the margin of error, but I did warn readers last week that I considered this week’s projection to be particularly uncertain due to multiple conflicting factors (holiday bump, lockdown, testing variability) so I don’t feel too bad about being off this week – plus it’s always nice when things work out better than expected.
Nationwide there were 8456 cases reported this week – which *is* within my margin of error (I’d predicted 8,053 – 12,595 cases nationwide). Why is Tbilisi seeing a larger reduction in cases than Georgia on average? I’d imagine possibly holiday travel out to the regions could account for that – maybe during the extended holiday lockdown a lot of people spent time in their villages, reducing the overall population of Tbilisi and thus the proportion of cases picked up there. That reduction in the number of people present in – and getting tested in – Tbilisi might also be a contributing factor to why my Tbilisi projection was off, which was a totally unexpected factor but in retrospect actually makes perfect sense.
Nationwide testing surged from 144641 tests last week to 216812 tests this week. I think I expect testing to drop again a little bit next week since 216812 is an above-average number of tests.
Nationwide positive test rate is down to 3.9% – a good sign.
Projections
My model says to expect 3257 cases in Tbilisi next week (low: 2540; high: 3973). Honestly this seems a bit low to me, and my 7-day ratio model predicts 3720 (low: 2902, high: 4538), which honestly looks more reasonable. I’m going to weasel out of committing to one of these and just say I’ll expect 2540 – 4538 cases based on my forecasting models. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even a little bit higher than that, but maybe I’m just being a pessimist.
Nationwide the projection is for 7547 cases (5887 – 9207). This again looks more reasonable than the Tbilisi forecast, but we’ll see. Risk assessment in the worst case is 1 in 180 people in Tbilisi infected and contagious. In a gathering of 10 people there would be about a 1 in 20 chance of one or more people being infectious.
News
More vaccines are incoming – see, for example, this article about Sinopharm. I’ve seen lots of articles about lots of vaccines coming in. I don’t think the country has to worry about supply anymore at this point – the issue seems to be in actual vaccination capacity. As I mentioned last week they’re promising to expand capacity, and apparently we’re up to 3600 shots going out per day, but I agree with Gamkrelidze here that this is still too slow.
Gamkrelidze also says that demand is rising (same link as above), which I’ve noticed myself anecdotally – after my own first shot, several of my Georgian relatives decided they wanted to get the shots too – so maybe vaccine hesitancy won’t be so much of a problem for the next little while. Georgians also seem oddly more comfortable with Sinopharm than the other vaccines, and I’m not sure why. I did pitch it pretty hard last week and maybe those reasons apply – it is a more classic formulation with fewer side effects than the adenovirus or mRNA vaccines. I’m not sure how dispassionately people are actually evaluating the science on a population-level scale, so maybe part of this is also the media/vaccine skeptics playing up the dangers of the “new” vaccines. Standard disclaimer: the dangers of getting and spreading covid are much worse than the risk from any of the currently-approved vaccines, so don’t hesitate to get your shots.
Back to life, back to reality
Post is short this week because I’m about to run out and enjoy the weather. It’s warm and I’m going to take a walk in the park. I’m still only 11 days out from my first shot, so likely not immune yet, so I’ll be avoiding contact with strangers, and keeping my mask on especially indoors. But I’m getting really close to the point when I won’t have to do that any more. It makes spring feel all the more springy. This might actually be a really nice summer.
Stay healthy!
Numbers courtesy of 1tv.ge and stopcov.ge.
Georgia On My Mind 