Where are the COVID-19 hotspots?

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Case counts this month in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida are higher than at any other point of the pandemic.

In Louisiana, case counts dropped 10% from a pandemic high of 5,839 cases per day on August 15 to 5,252 cases on August 19. The state's case rate of 113 new daily cases per 100,000 people is second to its neighbor Mississippi, which has 120 new cases per 100,000 people. With a seven-day average of 3,582 new cases on August 19, the number of cases in the state is 45% higher than its winter peak on January 10.

In late July, Louisiana's case rate is higher than the US case rate at any point during the pandemic.

As of August 19, Florida has a seven-day average of 20,374 new cases. The state is home to 16% of the 130,031 new cases per day in the US.

Most states with case rates above the US average also have the nation’s lowest vaccination rates.

Vaccination rate lower than US average

Vaccination rate higher than US average

The US 7-day average case count is 40 cases per 100,000 people. During the week ending June 18, there were 11,286 new cases per day or three new cases per 100,000 people.^[1] The current case count is down 48% from a pandemic high of 250,527 cases per day in January.

Case counts are back to mid-May levels.

There were 855 COVID-19 deaths per day the week ending August 13. That's down 74% from mid-January, when there were 3,245 deaths per day. During the week ending July 5 — which included a government holiday that might have delayed data — there were 209 deaths per day.

There have been 36.7 million COVID-19 cases — one for every nine Americans — since the pandemic began. COVID-19 caused a reported 614,553 deaths since 2020.

[1]: Data gathered June 11, 2021 from Florida shows negative cases for the state. This period was excluded from determining the period of the fewest cases since the pandemic began.