US Covid – End April 2022 – Song Remains the Same

As we’ve seen for the last several weeks, cases continue to rise. More states are now seeing cases rise. The rate of the rise continues to grow but case counts remain relatively low. We have passed where we were at this time last year because in May of 2021, cases were heading down. Again, it seems unlikely that things are going to take off from here but they certainly aren’t slowing down.

For the week ending on May 1st, there were 400,049 newly reported cases which was an increase of almost 26% from the previous week. This is the largest percentage increase we’ve seen in this wave and we’ve now had three weeks in a row with increases above 20%. We are still below the 433,511 recorded during the week ending on February 27th.

Visually, it looks like what you see below which shows daily new reported cases grouped by week for all of 2022. This is just to put our current numbers into perspective when compared to where we were back in January. Long way to go before we get back to those levels.

This next graph is cases per million against weekly increase. As reporting gets spotty, we see things like DC which shows a pretty big decrease but only because the last day with reported cases was April 26th. Chances are good they move the other side of the chart next week as reporting catches up.

You can see that most states are to the right of the 0 meaning they had an increase and we’ve got more falling above 1000 cases per million so the increase is generally happening everywhere. In terms of cases, this still remains primarily an issue for the Northeast as the ten states with the highest number of cases per million last week were Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Maine, New Jersey, Alaska, Illinois, Connecticut and New Hampshire.

The states with the least amount of cases were Mississippi, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, South Dakota, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Interesting set of clusters there.

The next graphs shows cases per million from this week vs cases per million from the week ending on May 1, 2021. Again, there is a correlation between years as states that have a high number of cases now tended to have a high number at this point last year as well.

There are certainly exceptions. Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Hawaii are well above where they were at this time last year. Colorado is well below. Another interesting thing is that there are only 21 states that have more cases now than they did at this time last year. So, even though the country is above where it was last year, it is primarily driven by a few states. Primarily California because it is has more people and thus more cases that a lot of the rest of the country.

Since I haven’t don these in a bit, here are the time series for each region of the country.

Last week, I thought I was seeing a slowdown here. Not really sure that is the case anymore and even Pennsylvania has started to see cases go up.

Just some weird bounces with DC due to their inconsistent reporting. Slow rise in cases pretty much everywhere.

Illinois has taken off a little faster but Wisconsin and Michigan aren’t too far behind. Michigan looks nothing like it did last April.

Cases have ticked up off the bottom but remain low in these three states.

Florida stands out here although it is lower than it was last year and the rate of increase hasn’t really curved upward like Illinois or places in the Northeast. Rest of the region still has very low numbers of cases.

Minnesota is the outlier here and looks more like Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan than the rest of the states in this region which still have very low numbers of cases.

Any increases here are small as all the states remain below the 1000 cases per million so this region is in good shape and not really seeing the rise we are seeing in other places.

Last year, Colorado was the outlier but it now looks like all the rest of the states here. Again, we may be seeing some increases over the lows of a few weeks ago but the case numbers remain low in all states in this region.

Hawaii jumps out a bit with cases curving up kind of sharply last week. Cases are also up in California but Arizona and Nevada look fine.

Cases are no longer going up in Alaska but they still are at high levels compared to the rest of the country. Cases have been going up in both Oregon and Washington and they are approaching Alaska and could pass Alaska if current trend continue.

So we’ve now seen cases rise for four weeks in a row but much of the increase remains centered in the Northeast where the highest case counts are. Each week brings a slightly higher level of concern but it still does not look like we are going to see the type of explosive growth we typically see in the winter.