Day 167: Neo-Neovisicide

ProMED reports that a twenty-fourth mink farm in the Netherlands has been found infected (despite strict isolation protocols) and "will be cleared as soon as possible." About 20% of mink farms in the Netherlands have been infected and culled at this point, a number suspiciously close to the (human) level of infection one might expect from their government's original (human) herd immunity plans.

In Denmark, a second and third farm have been found infected. Over half of the herd of 5,000 mink at the third farm were positive, and all were slaughtered at the beginning of July. In addition, the family dog at the first Danish farm has tested positive, but apparently escaped the wholesale slaughter.

Massachusetts cases are up a fifth of a percentage point today. The MDPH cities and towns report was even more mauled than we at PlagueBlog Headquarters initially thought; they are no longer reporting test counts per person, but are now giving an actual total of all tests (so Boston jumped from 97,288 persons tested to 141,184 tests performed). They are also not reporting case rates any longer. (Some rate maps survive in the report, but the data is gone.) While case rates can be calculated from the case totals and public population information, the MDPH doesn't report the actual "denominators estimated by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute using a modified Hamilton-Perry model" that they used, so a direct comparison with the rates they used to report would require some gymnastics not really merited by our current low numbers.

They are still reporting positivity (if you care for that sort of thing) as well as more "last 14 days" data (that was easily derived from the previous, fuller reports), and one useful thing having to do with percent positivity: whether it's going up or down. So here is our current take on the last 14 days:

(Pop out.)