COVID-19 In North Carolina
Since the start of 2022 I have noticed a large number of my friends and family getting sick, some with COVID-19. The latest COVID-19 variant is the “Omicron” variant and it seems to be particularly contagious. I decided to download some data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and explore the situation with a few charts.
The first chart is the total number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. There is a large increase in cases in the most recent observation. There are less hospitalizations for this wave, however — with fewer deaths.
The next chart shows the percentage changes for each of the series above. It more clearly shows the difference between cases and deaths for this latest wave.
The chart below is a scatterplot of hospitalizations against cases. Perhaps the most noticeable aspect about this chart is the difference in cases for the January 3rd 2022 observation, versus the January 4th 2021 observation.
An examination of vaccine rates was a natural next step. The stacked bar chart below shows the total number of vaccinations over time — with each color representing a different age group. Since Dec 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under EUA in individuals 16 years of age and older, and the authorization was expanded to include those 12 through 15 years of age on May 10, 2021. On November 2nd, 2021 the CDC recommended COVID-19 vaccination for children aged 5–11.
The last chart shows the above data in a slightly different way, isolating each age group. Here we can clearly see the reactions amongst the various age groups.
This project only took a few hours from start to finish, from data wrangling to visualization. Overall the latest wave appears more infectious and less deadly than previous waves. According to this data, the number of fully vaccinated North Carolinians is 5,946,266. This is roughly 56% of the ~10.5 million people living in NC.
Further Questions:
- Can we quantify how much “less deadly” this latest wave is than the last waves?
- What data can be gathered to determine whether or not those becoming hospitalized are fully/partially vaccinated?
Thanks for reading!
