A visual history of Covid-19's path through Vermont

[erronis]

https://vtdigger.org/2025/03/14/a-visual-history-of-covid-19s-path-through-vermont/

“It was hard to anticipate the scale that this would go to,” said the state’s director of health surveillance. “So with every new piece of information, we were sort of pivoting and adjusting our approach.”
by Erin Petenko March 14, 2025, 6:52 am

This is an excellent presentation of that terrible period.

Patsy Kelso, Vermont’s state epidemiologist, remembers hearing about Covid-19 for the first time through the “routine channels.” The Centers for Disease Control and other public health entities regularly share information about emerging infectious diseases, from mpox virus circulating worldwide to Ebola outbreaks in Uganda.

But there was nothing, at first, that suggested Covid would be the one to shut down the world. “It did take me by surprise, personally, how quickly things ramped up,” Kelso said.

The spread of Covid within the United States was so misunderstood that the focus of many experts was on preventing transmission from international travelers. In reality, the virus had been spreading nationwide for months.

Vermont officials recommended hand washing and staying home when sick, but masking and social distancing were not yet on the horizon for the general public. In fact, only three days after Vermont’s first Covid case on March 7, 2020, hundreds of people attended a University of Vermont basketball game. At least 20 confirmed Covid cases were later linked to the event.

. . .

[BOSSHOG]

1. Why did the death reporting End?

[erronis]

2. Good question. See link below.

https://vtdigger.org/2025/02/28/vermont-stops-publishing-covid-19-death-and-case-data/

VTDigger has been an excellent resource over the years and frequently at the forefront for data analysis and reporting.

The Vermont Department of Health has stopped including data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in its weekly surveillance reports.

The department posted on its website on Feb. 19 that Covid data reporting would transition to “to a format similar to other respiratory viruses like the flu.”

The latest surveillance update contains data on emergency department visits for Covid, the proportion of variants from clinical specimens, Covid levels in wastewater sampling and a count of the latest outbreaks.

Emergency department and wastewater data suggest that Covid levels are on the decline from a relative surge in December and January.

The department said on its website that case data has become “a less meaningful” indicator of Covid trends as individual cases have been reported on a limited basis by health care settings and laboratories. Officials have warned that case data, based on PCR testing, has been less accurate since the widespread adoption of antigen testing in 2022. The department stopped publishing daily Covid case counts in 2023.

“Reporting of individual SARS-CoV-2 infections to public health has become increasingly sporadic as testing patterns have changed (including widespread use of at-home testing),” state epidemiologist Patsy Kelso wrote in an email when asked if there was a specific justification for the more recent shift.

A higher proportion of Covid infections now tend to be asymptomatic, Kelso said, meaning they were less likely to require health care intervention that would result in a Covid PCR test.

[BOSSHOG]

4. Thank You

[hlthe2b]

3. Very well done. Bookmarking (among my collection) for future skeptics...