An ABC News analysis of COVID-19 trends across all 50 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam found there were increases in hospitalizations over the past two weeks in 41 states plus Guam.
The analysis also found increases in the daily positivity rate of COVID-19 tests in 27 states plus Guam and increases in daily COVID-19 death tolls in 17 states.
Meanwhile, case numbers are higher — a daily average of at least 15 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week — and staying high in 31 states plus Puerto Rico and Guam, and case numbers are lower — a daily average of under 15 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week — but are going up in nine states.
One state — North Dakota — hit a record number of new cases in a 24-hour reporting period. Nine other states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and West Virginia — saw a record number of current hospitalizations in day.
The United States is rapidly approaching an average of 60,000 new cases a day, with no signs of slowing. At its peak in July, the country reported an average of 66,000 new cases per day.
Over the last five and a half weeks, new cases across the nation have surged by more than 72%. More than 1 million cases have already been registered in the month of October alone, with over 412,000 reported in just the last seven days.
States across the Midwest such as Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin all continue to consistently report high numbers, while other states such as Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Ohio continue to trend upward.
Additionally, nearly 40,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, the highest in almost two months.
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.
