I have been writing weekly reports for 22 weeks, since June 20th. Back then the nation experienced a lull in cases. Three states had weekly new case rates of over 1000 per million population with Arizona recently assuming first place with 2107. For the week ending November 14, 37 states have higher rates than Arizona's number. Arizona itself, after demonstrating a marked decrease with their case rate going down to 359 in September, is up to 2222.
North and South Dakota continue to lead the nation in reported new cases with 12454 (six times that of Arizona on June 20th) and 11279, respectively, per million population. Iowa is not far behind with 10142.
In reality, these numbers do not reflect the new cases in those states. For this past week, the positivity rates, that is, the percentage of the tests that are positive, were 67% for North Dakota and 57% for South Dakota. North Dakota was 33rd in the rate of testing per million and South Dakota 30th. With this high of a positivity rate, these states should be doubling their tests or more.
If North Dakota doubled their testing and the positivity rate for those new tests dropped to 40%, they would be showing 19885 new cases per million this past week. (I suspect that this number is an underestimate.)
A total of 25 states had an increase of at least 40% in their case numbers this past week.
Vermont tripled their cases and lost their status as having the lowest case rate, an honor which they've held since the week ending July 4th. Hawaii is now in first place with Vermont second. Hawaii was the only state to have fewer cases this past week over the previous one, although Virginia came close, increasing from 9783 to 9785 cases.
The daily number of new cases is more than double its pre-October peak. This situation could get worse. Currently, the most populous states are among those with the lowest rates of new cases. The four most populous states and their ranks for new cases per million: California (45th), Texas (36th), Florida (40th), and New York (42nd). Florida keeps their case numbers down in part by ranking the worst in tests per population (that is, this past week 51st place with the District of Columbia included in the count).
When Did this Recent Wave Start?
The week ending October 3rd had a decrease in cases from the previous week. Since then the cases nationwide have had a steepening increase each week.
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| Percent increase in cases over the previous week |
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| Rate of New Cases Per Million Population |
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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