New York not Hitting SARS-CoV2 Peak Update

An update to my prior post. I stand by the substance of the post that New York has not seen a clear peak, but I found a better way to express the reasoning. The COVID Tracking Project has been capturing the number of patients in ICU's in New York State (and a handful of other states). On a day-to-day basis the percentage of ICU patients who die in NY State varies between 12 - 17%. That introduces a lot of volatility to the analysis.

We can get a clearer picture of the severity of the pandemic by trying to predict the number of patients in NY's ICU's, rather than the number who have died. As was the case with my prior analysis, lagging new active cases by 7-9 days produces the best result. You can see the strength of the relationship in the chart below.

New York has been particularly hard-hit the past three days (and again today). The second chart displays the SARS-CoV2 fatalities as a percentage of ICU beds occupied on the prior day. The numbers were improving until April 7 when they shot up; and they have remained there since.

I don't know why this has occurred, but I suspect it has less to do with the number of people dying in New York State ICU's than it has to do with the State of New York identifying SARS-CoV2 deaths that are occurring outside of hospitals. I don't have the data to test the theory, however.