An ABC News analysis of COVID-19 trends across all 50 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico found there were increases in hospitalizations over the past two weeks in 41 states.
The analysis also found increases in newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 39 states, increases in the daily positivity rate of COVID-19 tests in 27 states and increases in daily COVID-19 death tolls in 13 states.
Over the last five weeks, cases have been steadily increasing across the nation. The United States is currently averaging over 55,000 new cases a day — the highest that average has been since Aug. 5. New cases have surged by over 61% since Sept. 12. Meanwhile, current COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to hover between 36,000 and 37,000.
In the past week alone, the country has recorded nearly 386,000 new cases, including two days where there were over 60,000 cases reported — the highest daily figures since late July.
Sixteen states reported record weekly increases in new cases. Fourteen states hit a record number of current COVID-19 hospitalizations last week, while two states saw a record number of current hospitalizations in a day. Two states reported their highest weekly death tolls from COVID-19.
This week, the United States is on track to top 1 million cases for the month of October, making it the fourth month on record to surpass the grim milestone.
The trends were all analyzed from data collected and published by the COVID Tracking Project over the past two weeks, using the linear regression trend line of the seven-day moving average to examine whether a state’s key indicators were increasing, decreasing or remained flat.
ABC News’ Benjamin Bell, Brian Hartman, Soorin Kim and Arielle Mitropolous contributed to this report.
