US Covid Cases Up Slightly

We’ll start with a disclaimer. The CDC file I used for the state data only contained data through Sunday and I saw lots of zeros over the weekend. Some of those are expected as states stop reporting on weekends but I can’t say that about all of the states. I think I need to wait until this particular file is updated on Tuesday which should then make any adjustments to the weekend totals.

The overall US total comes from a different file and the case numbers are relatively solid (there are always minor changes) so I’m confident in the total but we might see some of the states move around as the gaps are filled in.

For the week ending on on March 27th, there were 194,429 newly reported cases which was up about 2.5% from last week and that marks the first weekly increase in nine weeks. I’ve mentioned before that last year we saw a small increase through April that was centered in a few states so we could be seeing a similar thing this year.

At this time last year, we finished the week with 433,129 newly reported cases so we are well under that number even with a variant that is more contagious. Last year, this early spring wave peaked somewhere between April 12th and April 17th so we’ll know soon enough whether this is going to be like that or the start of some new bigger wave.

We did have 18 states and DC where cases were up last week and that is a big increase from the previous two weeks where we just had a handful. It also needs to be noted that New York’s weekly total is now higher than their total from a month ago. I use the monthly change to identify longer term upward trends and that seems to be the case in New York right now. New York also has the fourth highest number of cases per million so it might by the leader indicator for whatever we are going to see.

But it is also worth noting that Indiana’s weekly total for last week was lower than the bottom set in mid June of 2021. There could be other states like this but I follow Indiana a little closer so it was the easiest to mention. Just an indication that we aren’t yet seeing cases rise everywhere.

The ten states with the lowest number of cases (per million) last week were Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Louisiana, Kansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi and Wyoming.

And the ten states with the highest number of cases were Alaska, Vermont, Kentucky, New York, Massachusetts, Idaho, Texas, Maine, Rhode Island, DC and New Jersey. Gave you an extra one since DC isn’t a state. Kind of clustered in the Northeast.

Just a random observation but is interesting that Kentucky sits near the bottom while the states above and below rank near the top with low numbers of cases.

We’ll just close with the graph showing cases vs weekly change. Nebraska is actually off the chart. I think they were doing some corrections to the records because they ended up with negative cases for the week which isn’t real. Alaska is another one to watch. Cases remain high and last week, the growth rate was basically flat so they aren’t seeing the continued declines we saw in Idaho and Montana.

So we saw a small increase for the week which is similar to what we saw last year at this time. For now, we’ll just assume that is the case unless we see things really start to take off.