The present status of COVID-19 in the US: mixed. Worse than most other countries except for Qatar and San Marino. Brazil??

Coronavirus studies by Engin Akyurt via pixabay.com

The daily death rate for the entire US has gone down, according to worldometer…  On the other hand, infection rates are increasing in almost half of states (according to other sources, not noted here).  Total cases reported for the US are 2.025 million and 113,000 deaths.  New cases are about 19,000 yesterday and 18,000 today, with a seven-day moving average of 22,000.  About 450,000 tests are done a day, with 21.655 million tests recorded.  The most new cases in a day was recorded on April 24 as 39,072.  The number of active cases has been over a million since May 8, and is now 1.133 million.  The most deaths reported was on April 21, with 2,693; the number of daily deaths reported has been less than 1,500 since May 28.

Florida has had a dramatic increase in new cases during the last week.  The seven-day moving average has jumped from 742 to 1,111 over the last week after staying steady for the last month; the average peaked at 1,143 on April 7.  There is no obvious explanation for the increase other than the recent opening of the state and the protests.

New York State, on the other hand, has seen a dramatic decrease.  New cases ran over 10,000 a day from April 4 to April 25 but dropped rapidly after that.  Cases have been about 1,000 a day for the last week.  New Jersey showed a similar pattern and has had much less than a thousand cases a day for the last week.

California has seen a gradual rise in new cases and peaked at 3,600 in a day on June 5.  Illinois saw a gradual rise, followed by a gradual decline and peaked at 4,014 new cases on May 12.  Massachusetts also had a gradual rise and decline but peaked on April 24.  Pennsylvania likewise peaked on April 24 and has declined since then.  Texas has shown a gradual increase in new cases all along and peaked at 2,080 new cases on June 5.

That rounds out the states with the most cases.  Other states don’t have detailed information on worldometer except for Louisiana, which peaked very early at 2,726 new cases on April 2; Ohio peaked at 1,380 on April 19; Washington peaked at 741 on April 2 and again on May 1 at 834, with a fairly steady lower rate.

Alabama had 425 new cases today.  Mississippi had 498.  South Carolina had 514.  Arkansas had 314 new cases today.  All these states are seeing dramatic increases in new cases, despite inadequate testing levels.  Northeast coast states have had much higher infection numbers in terms of cases per capita, but also had much higher testing levels.  All suffered from their proximity to New York.

Our conclusion: a highly mixed picture, with increasing infections in some states and decreasing levels in others.  Florida is a particular area for concern right now.  The southern states are also going to see more cases and more deaths over the next few weeks.

As far as the world goes, Brazil is number two for most cases, with over 700,000; they only have a million tests recorded– that doesn’t seem right.  Figures in that country are very questionable.  South America in general is being hit very hard and has few resources to deal with the problem.

Russia is number three with 476,000 recorded, but say they have done 13 million tests.  Spain is number four with 288,000 cases and 4.4 million tests, the most per capita at 95,000 tests per million population.  The UK (287K), India(265K), Italy(235K), Germany(176K), Peru(199K with 6,000 cases per million, equal to the US rate), and Iran(173K) round out the top ten with over 170,000 cases.  Qatar is an outlier with 24,000 cases per million people but only 2.8 million people.

India and China are outliers with very few infections per million population.  In India, it’s probably due to not enough tests.  In China, we don’t know how many tests were done nor do we know the true rates of infection due to government censorship.

That’s a lot of figures for one web site.  Looking at the rate of infections per million population, you can see the US is seriously compromised at 6,000 per million.  Take a look at these figures and decide for yourself.