240 New Cases Of Coronavirus In Rhode Island; 10 Deaths

PROVIDENCE, RI — The Rhode Island Department of Health reported 240 new cases of the coronavirus Sunday and 10 deaths. To date, there have been 12,674 cases total and 499 deaths.

As of Sunday, 260 people were hospitalized, down from 272 Friday. Of those, 64 were in intensive care units and 45 were on ventilators. The number of people hospitalized in the state has held steady in past weeks, declining slowly from a peak of 372 on April 28.

Declining hospitalization rates are a key indicator of when it's safe to begin further efforts to re-open the economy. To safely begin phase two, the state will have to meet the follow benchmarks, Raimondo said.

1. Hospital capacity: To make sure hospitals do not get overwhelmed, total bed capacity must stay below 70 percent, both overall and in intensive care units, Raimondo said. At this time, Rhode Island's hospitals are currently at 30 percent capacity with coronavirus patients, and 20 percent in ICUs.
2. New hospitalizations: The number of new hospitalizations is a good indicator of overall trends, Raimondo said. Ideally, the state will continue to see fewer than 30 hospitalizations per day. If there are 50 to 60 people hospitalized per day, the state may need to reimpose restrictions.
3. Rate of spread: The rate at which infected people infect others, or r-value, must stay at or below 1.1, Raimondo said. At this time, Rhode Island is just below 1, which means that each person with COVID-19, on average, infects just one other person. At the height of the outbreak in March, that value was 3, Raimondo said, which was "unsustainable and scary."
4. Doubling rate of hospitalizations: At this time, the number of hospitalizations in Rhode Island is holding steady, Raimondo said, compared to doubling every two to three days in March when the virus was "running away with itself." To successfully move forward, the goal is to have the rate of hospitalizations double in a month or longer, Raimondo said.

Along with these benchmarks, the state will also assess its systems, such as testing capacity, strength of contact tracing, and ability to quickly respond to outbreaks.

"Some people are frustrated it's too slow," Raimondo said. "I get that. I wish I could go faster. The problem is that if you do that, two or three weeks from now, you could run into an overwhelmed hospital."

The latest town-by-town cases numbers are listed below, updated as of Thursday evening.

• Providence: 3,913
• Pawtucket: 1,165
• Cranston: 685
• Central Falls: 668
• North Providence: 608
• East Providence: 580
• Warwick: 461
• Woonsocket: 454
• Cumberland: 238
• Johnston: 232
• Smithfield: 223
• West Warwick: 208
• North Kingstown: 177
• Coventry: 134
• Lincoln: 127
• Bristol: 94
• South Kingstown: 87
• Burrillville: 79
• North Smithfield: 70
• Tiverton: 65
• East Greenwich: 59
• Newport: 50
• Westerly: 47
• Warren: 44
• Narragansett: 36
• Barrington: 34
• Middletown: 33
• Exeter: 32
• Glocester: 31
• Portsmouth: 29
• Scituate: 27
• West Greenwich: 21
• Charlestown: 17
• Richmond: 16
• Little Compton: 12
• Hopkinton: 12
• Foster: 12
• Jamestown: 8
• New Shoreham: 1