Op-Ed: New test scores show students lost a lot of ground in the pandemic. Overreacting won’t help.
The numbers are just starting to roll in.
The first wave of COVID-19 fatalities, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, were the first to be publicly reported, as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed a total of 1,726 COVID-19 deaths nationwide, with 2,735 reported to be hospitalized, including one person with more than 100 days in intensive care, as of March 28.
Massachusetts and Rhode Island initially reported a total of 585 deaths, which increased to 729 by March 28 when updated results for the two states were released.
Massachusetts saw 431 fatalities and Rhode Island saw 253, with one person in the state with more than 100 days in the intensive care unit. The number of fatalities is an increase of 7 percent in Massachusetts (with a rate of death of 1.3 per 100,000 people) and 15.1 percent in Rhode Island (with a rate of 2.7 per 100,000 people).
So far, over half of the deaths in Massachusetts have not required hospitalization, meaning the state’s overall death rate is 1.3 per 100,000 people, with just 26.6 percent of people who have been hospitalized dying in the intensive care unit.
Rhode Island, on the other hand, has a death rate of 2.7 per 100,000 people, with 63.2 percent of people who have been hospitalized dying in the intensive care unit.
Death rates based on the number of hospitalizations have not yet been released for Rhode Island or Massachusetts, which means we don’t know how many people died from complications associated with COVID-19 once they were hospitalized.
The number of people with hospitalization may not hold up as we continue to monitor the situation. Rhode Island
