COVID-19 Trends – U.S. States Compared to the World

Recent data from Johns Hopkins suggests that many U.S. states are doing much worse than most other countries around the world in controlling the spread of COVID-19. Comparing recent weekly averages of new cases for individual states to other countries and normalizing by population, there are only three countries with new cases that are on a similar level to the top 10 states in the U.S. See the table below for a list of the top 10 U.S. states in the recent weekly average of new cases per one million people, along with the top countries outside the U.S.

In the table, the U.S. states are colored black, and the nations are colored blue. Compared to the rest of the world, five states – Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alabama – rank higher than every other nation in the world in new cases. Mississippi only trails Peru. Note that most of the states are in the southern part of the U.S. South Dakota is experiencing a surge in cases that is directly linked to a huge motorcycle rally that took place earlier in August. Alabama is high on the list partly due to a huge outbreak at the University of Alabama, which recently started fall semester.

For those that argue that the number of cases is higher in the U.S. due to testing, look at a similar comparison for recent deaths due to COVID-19, which is not much better. See the table below, which lists the recent weekly average of new deaths per one million people from the virus.

In this case, there are five countries that can compare to the U.S. We are doing much worse than almost every other country at controlling the spread of COVID-19. Even if things are starting to get somewhat better as a whole in the U.S., cases are still on the rise in some states. The impact of school and university re-openings is just starting to show up in the statistics, so this can get worse.