Data: The COVID Tracking Project, state health departments; Map: Andrew Witherspoon, Sara Wise/Axios
Coronavirus infections ticked up slightly over the past week, thanks to scattered outbreaks in every region of the country.
Where it stands: The U.S. has been making halting, uneven progress against the virus since August. Overall, we're moving in the right direction, but we're often taking two steps forward and one step back.
By the numbers: The U.S. saw an average of about 37,000 new cases per day over the past week.
- The daily rate of new cases increased in 17 states: Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Wyoming and Washington.
- Cases declined in 13 states.
- Testing fell by over 6% from the week before. The U.S. averaged just under 695,000 tests per day.
- There's no clear geographic trend at work. Since the mid-summer surge across the Sun Belt subsided, new outbreaks have been driven largely by one-off, localized events — like college campuses reopening and the Sturgis motorcycle rally, which drove an earlier outbreak in South Dakota.
How it works: Each week, Axios tracks the change in new infections in each state. We use a seven-day average to minimize the effects of day-to-day discrepancies in states’ reporting.
