MACON, Ga. — It's now been nearly three weeks since Georgia began reopening some businesses, but understanding how that's affected the number of new daily cases of COVID-19 is trickier than it might sound.
The challenge has everything to do with the most recent 14 days of data.
The Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) has warned everything in that 14-day window is preliminary data because of the way the state is tracking and graphing new cases.
In other words, it's incomplete.
That presents a challenge when we try to tackle the question of "How has the phased reopening affected the case curve?"
We just don't have many data points to go off of.
Sure, Georgia is 18 days removed from that May 1 beginning of the reopening, but 14 of those days still only have preliminary data.
Trying to make an actual determination using the four days of firmer data doesn't leave a lot of data points to work with. At this point, there's just not yet enough data to go off of to say one way or another how the slow reopening is affecting the case curve.
That being said, the data that is firmed up shows two encouraging signs.
First, the four days of data after the reopening (May 1, 2, 3, and 4) all show a downward trajectory in the seven-day average trend line.
Second, that trend line has actually been dropping since about April 22nd.
At that point, Georgia had about 750 new cases per day on average. Now, at the 14-day window on May 4th, the state is down to about 640 new cases on average.
We'll keep tracking how this trend develops over the coming days and weeks.
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