NEW YORK—Optical sales throughout the U.S. continued their gradual decline that started nearly a month ago, according to the latest Jobson Practice Performance Tracker. Over the course of last week, April 19-25, all product/service categories being tracked declined by 2 index points. This downward trajectory began when comparing the week of March 29-April 4 with the week of March 22-28, when national optical sales began falling during the Easter and Passover holidays and have continued in that direction since.

Last week’s decline in optical sales coincides with the current seven-day moving average of daily new COVID cases decreasing by about 10 percent when compared with the previous seven-day moving average, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review. 

Optical sales in the West performed the best over the course of last week among all four census regions being tracked, yet this region still showed small declines of -2 index points for contact lenses, -1 index point for gross revenue and frame units, while remaining flat in the categories of exams/refractions and lens pairs.

Optical sales in the South decreased the most, at a rate of -3 index points across the board, except contact lenses, which fell by 2 index points in the South. The largest regional decline last week was observed in the Midwest for contact lenses, which fell by 4 index points. Last week’s regional declines in optical sales coincided with most states showing declining cases of COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. 

The Jobson COVID-19 Practice Performance Tracker data is compiled by Jobson Research from GPN/EDGEPro and ABB Analyze data.

This index baseline was developed by Jobson Research from total sales from an average 7 days in the first quarter of 2019.

Click here to view the complete Jobson COVID-19 Performance Tracker