COVID Death Update

bklinger

Two weeks ago I posted graphics showing the path COVID was taking through the states. There has been a lot of news about rising caseloads throughout the country, but in recent weeks the rise in deaths had been much slower.

Until this week.

National deaths from confirmed or probable COVID for the contiguous United States and divided among 4 broad geographical regions.

The week ending last Sunday jumped up to about 7000 deaths per week (360,000/year) after staying below 6000 for two weeks in a row and 5000 in a previous week. All major geographic regions (except the West Coast) saw an increase in deaths.

COVID deaths/million per week for individual states and groups of states, for every week since mid-March.

There continues to be wide differences between states. My region, DE-MD-DC-VA, for instance, has had declining deaths for 3 weeks in a row. NC-SC and FL had small declines as well. But if these numbers are to be believed, GA had a tremendous rise, nearly doubling in one week. I checked the Washington Post’s COVID page – just to make sure there wasn’t a bug in my Matlab code making the graph – and it showed a similar rise.

The Mountain states had big increases, with the northern Mountain states vying with Georgia for highest death rate in the country. The Great Lakes states also have an upward trend. In the Northeast, the death rates are among he lowest in the country, but also show signs of rising.

With case loads rising, its likely that the death rate will continue to go up. States with high death rates now needed to tamp down spread weeks ago. States with low death rates now need to act now to prevent the next wave.

Data is from the Covid Tracking Project.