For months I posted weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the end of June, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).

This basically amounts to the point when the Delta Variant wave hit the U.S., although it had been quietly spreading under the radar for a few months prior to that.

Now that we're a full five weeks into the Omicron Variant wave, I've updated my case/death rate tracking to reflect that as well...because the data so far is showing a completely new chapter as we enter the 3rd year of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The "start" of the Delta Wave was easy to lock in for my purposes; both cases and deaths from COVID had dropped off dramatically right up until around the end of June. The Delta Wave started showing up in the daily deaths pretty quickly as July started. The transition from the Delta to Omicron was a lot fuzzier, but I've decided to go with December 15th as my transition point.

As always, here's my methodology:

So, I plugged in the latest COVID case & death rates at the county level as I do every week. I recently decided to switch from using the beginning of the Delta wave as my starting point (June 30, 2021) to using the "start" of the Omicron wave (around December 15, 2021 as far as I can figure) instead.

Last night, however (yes, I know I'm a nerd doing this on a Saturday evening), I decided to see what it looks like if I use June 30th as my starting point again, and this generated a pretty remarkable contrast which goes to show two things: First, just how insanely contagious the new Omicron COVID variant is; and second, how extremely effective the COVID vaccines are (especially with the 3rd/booster dose added to the mix).

Here's the updated county-level case rates across all 50 states +DC, broken out into 10 roughly equal populations by 2-dose vaccination rate (booster data wasn't available as of this writing):

Methodology reminders:

• I go by county residents who have received the 2nd COVID-19 shot only (or 1st in the case of the J&J vaccine).
  • NEW: Scroll down to see my first attempt at tracking 3rd/Booster shots, with some important caveats of its own

• I base my percentages on the total population via the 2020 U.S. Census as opposed to adults only or those over 11 years old (or even over 4 years old).

• For most states + DC I use the daily data from the Centers for Disease Control, but there are some where the CDC is either missing county-level data entirely or where the CDC data is less than 90% complete at the county level. Therefore:
  • For Vermont and West Virginia, I'm using data from the COVID Act Now Risk & Vaccine Tracker database
  • For Virginia, I've started using the official state health department dashboard due to some weirdness in the COVID Act Now data for VA. Unfortunately the VA Health Dept. dashboard doesn't allow you to export, view or download all 95 counties/city-counties at once, making this a tedious effort, so I'll only be updating Virginia once a month.

This just in via Nevada Health Link:

Nevada Health Link Enrolls Over 100,000 Nevadans in Health Insurance During Open Enrollment

• The Silver State Health Insurance Exchange marks its highest enrollment numbers during 2022 Plan Year Open Enrollment Period

(CARSON CITY, NV) – Over 100,000 Nevadans enrolled in health insurance during Nevada Health Link’s two-and-a-half month Open Enrollment Period (OEP) which ended Saturday, January 15. With a 25% increase in enrollments from last year’s enrollment period, this marks the largest enrollment cohort since the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange (Exchange) began operating as a state-based marketplace in 2019.

Of the 101,409 total Nevadans who enrolled in health insurance plans through NevadaHealthLink.com, 20,897 were new enrollees, meaning they were not previously enrolled in health insurance through the Exchange. 27,717 were active re-enrollees, meaning they went to NevadaHealthLink.com to upgrade or change their current plan.

via CoverME.gov, Maine's new state-based ACA exchange:

Over 66,000 Maine People Chose Affordable Health Plans for 2022 on CoverME.gov

• Plan selections for the first year of Maine’s State-based Health Insurance Marketplace outpaced previous year by more than 10 percent

AUGUSTA— The Mills Administration announced today that 66,095 Maine people selected plans for affordable health insurance for 2022 at CoverME.gov, Maine’s new Health Insurance Marketplace, an increase of more than 10 percent over the previous year.

At Governor Mills’ direction, Open Enrollment ended on January 15, 2022, giving Maine people an extra month to browse and enroll in quality, affordable health plans. During this first Open Enrollment Period as a State-based Marketplace, which began on November 1, 2021, an additional 6,357 Maine people selected plans, surpassing the 2021 Open Enrollment period and reversing declines in Marketplace plan selections since 2017.

IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW

DISCLAIMER: HealthSherpa is one of the Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE) ACA brokers which run banner ads on my site. EDEs are basically authorized private, 3rd-party versions of ACA exchange sites which have their back ends integrated directly into the federal exchange (HealthCare.Gov) (W3LL and Stride Health are the other EDEs which advertise here).

Having said that, I believe Sherpa is the largest ACA EDE out there, and they're pretty transparent about their enrollment metrics, so until CMS posts their latest official Weekly Snapshot Enrollment Report (which should happen soon), Sherpa's updates are pretty good indicators of how things are going overall.

It's important to remember to that Sherpa is currently only equipped to enroll people in the 33 federal exchange states (i.e., those utilizing HealthCare.Gov).

DC Health Link recently posted thei 2022 enrollment summary as of January 10th as part of their monthly board of directors meeting.

On the surface the numbers look pretty straightforward:

INDIVIDUAL ENROLLMENT:

• Current Enrollment: 15,993 covered lives
• Enrollment 1 Year Ago: 16,373 covered lives
• CHANGE: -380

SHOP ENROLLMENT:

I've received a copy of Access Health CT's monthly board meeting slideshow, which includes the final 2022 Open Enrollment Period metrics and other demographic data. Here's some of the key points:

OE Enrollment/Eligibility Activity:

• Started OE 9 with 107,058 enrollees (Up 8%)
• 112,634 enrolled into a qualified health plan (Up 7%)
• 47.5% eligible for APTC (Up 20%), 36.2% eligible for APTC/CSR (Down 6%).
• Enrollees ineligible for financial help down 43%
• 24,773 determined eligible and completed application for Medicaid (Down 27%)

112,634 is the topline number. Last year's final OEP enrollment tally for Connecticut was 104,946 QHP selections, which means they actually ended up 7.3% year over year. FWIW, I think CT's all-time OEP enrollment record was 116,000 back in 2016.

This just in via the Massachusetts Health Connector (by email):

• 253,253 January effectuations
• 6,247 February and March effectuations
• 4,643 plan selections
• 264,143 total enrollments/plan selections

The above includes 22,729 new enrollments, which includes people who never had Health Connector coverage in the past, or who did, dropped exchange at some point, and have come back for 2022.

This is up around 2,000 since December 25th, but is still down over 10% from last year, making Massachusetts one of only 5 state exchanges to see QHP enrollment drop year over year (to be fair, there's still a few days left for MA as well as Kentucky, DC and New York. The fifth is Hawaii. Having said that, enrollments in the other four states only runs through anywhere from December 15th - December 25th, whereas MA's total is current through yesterday.

via Covered California:

Covered California Begins 2022 With a Record 1.7 Million Enrollees and Encourages Uninsured Californians to Sign Up Now as Deadline Approaches