5 Slide Series

This edition summarizes state and county dynamics regarding the progression of cases and deaths. We have tabulated new cases per capita by month in each state. More than half of the US population (54%) lives in a county that reported an increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases this past week (June 10 – 17) compared to the prior week.

This edition of our 5 Slide Series is our 20th special edition focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic. As with all prior editions, we have tabulated several highly current data points. The newest type of analysis involves quantifying differences in COVID death rates per capita by race, showing that through June 7, African Americans have experienced more than twice the COVID-19 per capita death rate as Whites, Latinos, and Asians. We also provide various statistics regarding new confirmed cases and tests, nationally and state-by-state – including state rankings on the degree to which new confirmed cases have emerged in the past week.

This 5 Slide Series edition tracks COVID-19 trends in various ways, such as the weekly progression of cases and deaths throughout the past three months. We’ve also captured week-to-week COVID-19 testing trends on a national basis. The number of new tests per week has nearly tripled since the beginning of April, but only two states have tested more than 10% of their population to date.

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.

This edition provides COVID-19 case and death trends at the state and national level through April 23, also including information for each US territory. Our key encouraging finding is that for two consecutive weeks the number of new confirmed cases has decreased nationwide (relative to the previous week). The more disturbing finding is that these decreases have been modest in size, with a massive number of new confirmed cases still occurring. This past week the nation averaged over 28,000 new confirmed cases per day. This rate of new confirmed cases is far above where it stood four weeks ago.

This edition of the Series focuses on US counties, showing the degree to which Americans reside in counties that may have moved past their peak in terms of new cases (52.2%), versus residing in counties where confirmed cases per day are still trending upward (42.5%). This edition also conveys detailed data about the nation’s 25 counties with the largest per capita rate of confirmed COVID cases as of April 22, and about the nation’s 25 largest counties.