Even to my untutored eye, the impact of Hurricane Sandy is pretty obvious. On October 30, 136 persons were identified as having cholera, with 86 hospitalized and one person dying. On October 31, the daily cases jumped to 416, with 237 hospitalized and 5 deaths.
The October 31 total case number, meanwhile, rose by 1,939 over the previous day. I assume this was the result of several days' worth of cases coming in at once, especially from Grande Anse, which had been silent the previous week.
The cholera spike continued: 332 cases on November 2; 373 on November 3. On November 4 the count fell to 187, rose to 201 on November 5, and stayed just above 200 on the 6th and 7th.
The daily case count rose from October 31 to November 7 by 2,304; the cumulative case count in those same days rose by 4,141. While the daily death count rose by 19, cumulative deaths since October 2010 rose by 35 to 7,661.
It must have been a harrowing week in the cholera treatment centres, and once again some departments were slow to report. So we don't know the real intensity of the post-Sandy spike, and perhaps we never will.
