I was about to write another post, but this number stopped me in my tracks. 487 Covid cases today. That’s half again as many (more than that, actually) as the previous one-day record.

Perhaps I was premature in writing that Gov. Phil Scott might soon be able to declare victory over the Delta variant. I mean, good God.

The figure comes with a caveat; an extraordinarily large number of tests were processed yesterday, and that contributed heavily to the high case total.

But still. Today’s other numbers were pretty bad as well. 55 hospitalized with Covid including 19 in ICU beds. Six new deaths. Test positivity rate continues its steady climb, now at 3.2%. So even accounting for the test processing total, there’s still a lot of Covid out there.

This isn’t an artifact, either. Health Department spox Ben Truman told VTDigger “the numbers are accurate and there are no associated glitches or delays,” referring to the previous single-day record of 330, which the department blamed on a computer error. Nope, that 487 is real.

Good thing Team Scott has five full days to come up with excuses before the governor faces the media again. They’ll need it.

Covid ain’t going away, folks. I’m making no unnecessary trips, masking everywhere I go, and might start double-masking. We will return to normal blogging activity after a brief sanity break.