This Is Only Going to Get Worse

Read: One day, 3,000 deaths

Case numbers were high across the U.S. this week, with each of the country’s seven most populous states reporting more than 50,000 new cases among their residents. Fourteen states in regions across the U.S. reported a record number of cases this week; that’s on top of the 16 states that hit new-case records last week.

The slowing case growth in midwestern states that we noted last week have continued: After the Thanksgiving data dip and subsequent rise, new cases appear to be declining in the region. Meanwhile, in the Northeast, South, and West, cases are rising sharply.

After 14 weeks of North or South Dakota posting the highest per capita case numbers in the country, Rhode Island has taken their place, with 1,253 cases per million on the seven-day average. (The below chart, along with most of the others we use in our weekly posts, is available as a mobile-friendly interactive tool in the Charts section of our site.)

With the catastrophic rise in cases, communities of color across the country have been especially hard hit by the terrible effects of the pandemic. In Rhode Island, more than one in eight Latino people has tested positive for COVID-19, compared with one in 31 white people. In both North and South Dakota, one in eight Black people has tested positive. Some of the highest per capita statistics are being reported for American Indians and Alaska Natives. South Dakota is reporting that one in seven Native Americans has tested positive for COVID-19. Notably, as case disparities between some other racial and ethnic groups have decreased in South Dakota, that has not been the case for Native Americans, for whom the weekly new cases reported per capita have been higher than for any other group, or the state overall, for the past three months. In surveying racial and ethnic disparities in other parts of the country, we also note that in Louisiana, one in six Asian people has tested positive for COVID-19.

Hospitalizations rose in 26 states this week, mostly concentrated in the Northeast, South, and parts of the West. We believe these rising numbers indicate that outbreaks will continue to worsen in many of the country’s most populous states. Although the Midwest still has the highest per capita number of people hospitalized, the actual numbers there are falling; nine states in the region reported drops in the number of people hospitalized compared with last week.

New Hampshire, Delaware, and Maine reported the largest percentage increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past week, with California and New York right behind them. In California, the already high number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients rose 23 percent from last week; the state is reporting that, statewide, ICUs are 90 percent full. ICUs in Silicon Valley and parts of the Central Valley are full, and San Francisco, which long maintained relatively low case levels given the city’s density and population, now says it may run out of hospital beds in the coming weeks. In Los Angeles County, ICU and overall hospital capacity are running low, and a record 1,719 health-care workers in the county reported last week that they have COVID-19, more than double the number who reported they were sick the week before.