New coronavirus cases are increasing in all but 5 states

Twenty-five states are reporting at least 200 more cases per day on average than they were two weeks ago. Two states, Illinois and Texas, are seeing more than 1,000 more new cases per day in that time. In another eight—mostly, in the Upper Midwest including Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin—the average number of new cases per day has increased by more than 500 per day. Those trajectories, along with rising and record hospitalization rates in many states, have led some experts to label this as the country’s “third surge.”  (The first surge started in late March and the second in July, when the nation recorded more than 77,000 new cases in one day; yesterday, the country reported roughly 60,600.)

While these rising rates haven’t been met with the sort of broad, shelter-in-place measures implemented earlier this year—and which are currently going back into effect in some places in Europe—restrictions on things like indoor dining and party bus use are being tried in some areas.

Hawaii is the only state where the average number of new cases per day is decreasing.

While the nation’s rising case numbers reflect, in part, more testing, the average seven-day positivity rate in many states—37 of them—is well above the 5% figure that the World Health Organization in May described as “too high” for governments to consider reopening. Twelve states, led by Indiana, with an average positivity rate of 41%, have rates above 15%.

States in the Northeast make up most of those with positivity rates below 2%.

State-by-state breakdown of daily new cases

Numbers based on a seven-day averages.