The first COVID-19 death in Barnstable County occurred on March 25, 2020, Day 12 of the Cape Cod epidemic.
The charts below plot the number of new daily deaths and total deaths attributed to COVID-19 since the start of the Cape Cod epidemic. All data are from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health at https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-response-reporting.
The first chart plots the total number of deaths and the 7-day moving average of the daily death count. Smoothing the graph by averaging the data helps to identify trends, because the substantial day-to-day variability obscures trends in plots of individual daily counts.
Cape Cod embarked on Phase 1 of the Baker-Polito plan for “reopening the economy” on May 18, Phase 2 on June 8 and June 22, and Phase 3 on July 6, which are highlighted on the charts by vertical yellow bars.
Analysis: The average number of new COVID-19 deaths reported daily in Barnstable County has exhibited a number of waves, which contrasts with the trend of the Massachusetts data, which shows one peak in April followed by a steady decline thereafter. (See MASSACHUSETTS.) The number of daily deaths from COVID-19 on Cape Cod has been averaging less than 0.5 per day since July 10.
Below is the same plot as the one above, except that the highly variable individual numbers of deaths reported daily are shown rather than the 7-day rolling averages.
See Massachusetts charts at MASSACHUSETTS for comparisons with the Barnstable County data.