The number of new daily coronavirus infections in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the US, has been slowly but steadily declining, but in the rest of the country, the virus’s toll continues to climb.
New York was hit first, and worst, but as testing expands, states like Illinois, New Jersey, Texas and Georgia are seeing spikes in new infections.
It’s particularly worrying as some of these same states are beginning to lift restrictions meant to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp, for example, has dismissed widespread criticism of his April 24 decision to allow business like nail and hair salons, gyms and tattoo parlors to reopen.
Yet on Monday, there were nearly 770 new cases of coronavirus in his state – the 11th highest increase in the nation that day.
Currently, New York state has nearly 27 percent of all coronavirus cases in the US, but its strict and ongoing lockdown measures have helped to bat back the number of new daily infections, a trend that is not representative of that nation as a whole.
There were 51 percent fewer new coronavirus cases in New York on May 4 than there were a week earlier, on April 28.
But in the nations other 55 states and territories, the number of new positive tests on May 4 was 10 percent higher than the number of new infections reported on April 28.
Even as the number of new cases of coronavirus per day in New York (yellow) has fallen, the same is not true for the rest of the US (red)
It underscores not only the different arcs of the pandemic across the US – and why it may be too soon for many states to reopen, even if their case numbers are currently low.
On April 17, the Trump Administration issued its guidelines for reopening states.
Among requirements for initiating each phase of reopening is a demonstration of a ‘downward trajectory’ of cases for two weeks, rather than a threshold number of daily infections.
Looking at the US data as an aggregate, the number of total infections is still on the rise.
Daily new cases across the US began declining on April 24, but ticked back up sharply from the 27th to May 1.
Since May 1, daily infections reported have been falling again – but Tuesday’s 25,791 new cases marked another uptick from the previous day’s 24,109.
Epidemiologists are careful to caution that any single day’s change in case or death rates doesn’t paint a very reliable picture, because errors in reporting and any number of other factors may skew the count from that 24-hour period.
They look instead at broader trends – a practice that undoubtedly informed the Trump administration’s requirement.
In at least 20 states as well as Puerto Rico, daily case numbers have increased by an average of at least 10 percent over the course of the last week, according to an Axios analysis.
Those states include places like Nebraska and Minnesota.
Each has no more than one-tenth the number of cases reported by New York. Compared to New York’s more than 231,000 cases, Nebraska has just 6,374, and Minnesota has only 7,851.
Compared to the previous week, the average daily new infections between April 24 and May 4 fell by 40 percent, an encouraging trend
Declines in cases have been seen in the US as a whole since the start of May – but with 26% of all the cases in the nation, New York’s progress is driving the national trend downward
But in the last week, Nebraska has seen a 57 percent average increase in cases, and Minnesota’s have surge by 155 percent.
In New York, on the other hand, the new infection rate has plummeted by 38 percent.
Yet Nebraska never issued a stay-at-home order and and will now allow restaurants to reopen at 50 percent occupancy and many other businesses will reopen with similar social distancing measures.
Minnesota plans to let 30,000 citizens return to work starting May 4, Governor Tim Walz announced, although businesses must have social-distancing in place and the stay-at-home order was extended until May 18.
‘Flatten the curve’ has become something akin to a rally cry in the US, and one that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo repeated daily for weeks in his press briefings.
And the impact of social distancing to that effect is evident in charts of the state’s daily case rates, which show a staggered decline.
Yet when New York’s infection rates are cut out of data on the US, new case rates look consistent, hovering in the range 20,000 to 30,000 new infections confirmed each day.
‘If you include New York, it looks like a plateau moving down,’ Dr Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine told the New York Times.
‘If you exclude New York, it’s a plateau slowly moving up.’