Month: May 2020

This edition of the 5-slide series has multiple components. We have grouped all counties (and states) into cohorts based on their overall population per square mile, to quantify the relationship between population density and COVID cases per capita. As one would expect, COVID has spread much more rapidly in higher-density population areas, with the per capita rate of infection through May 27 more than 3 times higher in our most dense population cohort (counties with more than 1,000 residents per square mile) than in our most sparsely populated cohort counties with fewer than 50 residents per square mile). Interestingly and perhaps importantly, the recent rate of new case growth is highest across the most sparsely populated counties – the number of new cases this past week was 10% lower than in the previous week across the nation’s most densely populated counties, but 6% higher across the most sparsely populated counties.

This edition conveys our tabulations on the recent week’s COVID developments. A key finding is that while new cases decreased by 3% nationwide this past week relative to the prior week, more than half the nation’s population resides in a county where the number of new confirmed cases increased. A more encouraging finding is that while nearly 10,000 new COVID deaths occurred this past week, this figure was 5,246 lower than the previous week’s new death count.

We have also provided testing data for each state. Nationwide, less than 4% of the population has been tested as of May 20; state-level figures range from a high of 11.4% in Rhode Island to a low of 2.2% in Idaho.

This edition of the 5-slide series quantifies COVID-19 per capita death rate differences by age cohort and between genders, tracks the recent emerging volume of new cases at the county, state, and national levels, and includes a slide on the Top 25 Counties with regard to cumulative confirmed cases per capita.

This edition of the 5-slide series conveys four data tabulations: 1) distribution of COVID deaths by age; 2) distribution of COVID deaths by gender within each age cohort; 3) county level tabulations on new case growth; and 4) a set of state level statistics on confirmed cases and deaths.

This edition tracks each state’s progression of new cases across the months of March and April. The key statistic we focus on is the level of average new confirmed cases per day, which was higher during the second half of April in 28 states than it has been at any prior point in time. 60% of the USA population resides in these 28 states where new case volume has recently continued to increase.

Similarly, looking at this past week (April 22-29) versus the prior week, 53% of the USA population resides in a county where the rate of new cases per day increased.