This article has been updated to correct numerous copy editing errors.
For Mercer County, the state today has reported 212 new cases of coronavirus and attributed 11 more deaths to the disease.
This after yesterday, when the state reported 120 new cases and 8 deaths. To date, the state has reported a total of 3,937 cases in Mercer County, and attributed 231 deaths to Covid-19-related causes.
Town-by-town data aggregated by Mercer County from its 12 municipal health departments is as follows (data is as of April 29):
Trenton: 1,230
Hamilton: 818
East Windsor (421) and Hightstown (102): 523
Ewing: 348
Lawrence: 181
West Windsor: 138
Princeton: 117
Hopewell Township (73), Hopewell Borough (4) and Pennington (10): 87
Robbinsville: 66
The county reports data this way, which makes sense, but doesn’t capture the whole picture. One would expect Trenton and Hamilton to have among the highest counts of infected people, since they have by far the largest populations of Mercer County’s 12 municipalities.
Another way to break down the data is per 1,000 residents. When looked at that way, Hightstown and East Windsor are the unfortunate communities that look to have been hit hardest by the virus:
Hightstown: 19.2 people per 1,000 residents have tested positive for Covid-19
East Windsor: 15.3 people per 1,000 residents
Trenton: 14.6 people per 1,000 residents
Ewing: 9.6 people per 1,000 residents
Hamilton: 9.3 people per 1,000 residents
Lawrence: 5.5 people per 1,000 residents
West Windsor: 4.9 people per 1,000 residents
Robbinsville: 4.5 people per 1,000 residents
Hopewell Township: 4.1 people per 1,000 residents
Pennington: 4 people per 1,000 residents
Princeton: 3.7 people per 1,000 residents
Hopewell Borough: 2.1 people per 1,000 residents
Of course, case counts aren’t tremendously meaningful either, since in New Jersey we are still only testing a small fraction of the population as a whole.
Just 222,241 tests have results have been reported. This would mean that at most, 2.5% of New Jersey residents have been tested for the virus — less, if the results include people who have been tested more than once.
Testing frequency has increased recently which is reflected in the overall positive test rate dropping from 45%, where it had been pegged for weeks, to 42% today. However, we know that there is no way that 42% of all New Jersey residents are positive for coronavirus, and until we have better testing data, there will always be a limit on the value of reported case counts.
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Experts say that in the absence of comprehensive testing, hospitalization data offers a clearer picture of how the virus is affecting New Jersey. On that front, the news continues to be generally good for the state.
The New Jersey Department of Health has introduced new graphs that show hospitalization information by region (click the Hospital Census tab). The graphs show a sharp downward trend for cases in North Jersey (comprising Essex, Bergen, Passaic, Sussex, Warren, Morris, Hudson, and Union counties), and a steady decline in Central Jersey (Mercer, Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean counties).
On the other hand, the graph for South Jersey (Burlington, Atlantic, Camden, Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland and Cape May Counties) appears to show a steady rise in cases. All is not as it seems however.
Because the Y axes for the three graphs have different maximum values, it is impossible to fairly compare the three regions. If the South Jersey data were plotted on the North Jersey graph, its rise in hospitalizations would not look as steep. Conversely, on a shared graph North Jersey’s decline in hospitalizations would not look as good.
Still, it’s true that North Jersey can take encouragement from its recent drop in hospitalizations, from a peak of 5,320 on April 14 to 3,410 as of yesterday. That represents a decrease of 36%.
It is also the case that North Jersey still has 3,410 hospitalized patients — more than Central and South Jersey combined, and so there is still much more to be done in the region.
Central Jersey has also seen hospitalizations drop, from a peak of 2,256 on April 13 to 1,814 yesterday. Meanwhile, South Jersey’s case count appears not to have peaked yet: the hospitalization count in the state’s southernmost 7 counties has gone from 666 on April 13 to 913 yesterday.
That is an increase of 27% since mid-April, and yet South Jersey still has fewer than half the total number of hospitalizations as Central Jersey, and almost a quarter of North Jersey’s total. South Jersey is the least populous of the three regions.
Until South Jersey passes its peak for hospitalizations — one can hope that will happen in the next week or so — calls for statewide easing of stay-at-home restrictions may yet be premature.
