The mid-summer peak in COVID-19 cases did not represent a true second wave: the spread of the virus could be clearly traced to those places where the first wave had only begun to crash. In mid- to late-July numbers of infections in the United States peaked, mostly due to very high infection rates in two of the most populous states, Florida and Texas, and a moderately high rate in the most populous state, California.
Seventeen states have had increases of at least 100% in their case rates over the past 4 weeks, since September 26 (as shown in the table below). The current peak in cases includes alarming rates in states that had until recently had the virus relatively under control, including New Mexico, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan and New Hampshire. Although Vermont had the highest rate of increase, they still maintain their place as having the least number of new infections over this past week: they had started incredibly low. Their new cases are no longer in the single digits per day.
Also in the table are several states that had very high case rates and then more than doubled them, including North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Only four states have had drops in their case rates over the past 4 weeks. These are, alphabetically, California, Hawaii, South Carolina and Texas.
Here are the states ranked from lowest to highest case rates for the week ending October 24th.
The week ending July 25th had the previous peak. Presented below is a graph for the states of that week on the scale presented above (with the Y axis continuing to 8000 cases per million).
Martin Hill Ortiz is a Professor of Pharmacology at Ponce Health Sciences University and has researched HIV for over thirty years.
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