Is your home state on the list?
After more than two years of weathering the pandemic, the U.S. still isn’t in the clear yet when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, as cases have started to spike again in almost every state.
Nationwide, cases jumped to 96,000 over the last week, marking a more than 50 percent increase from two weeks ago when cases were around 62,500. The highest rates of infection have been in the Northeast: Both Connecticut and Rhode Island reported around 76 cases per 100,000 people, while Massachusetts came in third with 66 new infections. Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, and Delaware are among the other states seeing the biggest upticks in infections.
Still, the latest coronavirus wave that’s accelerating across the country doesn’t seem to be concerning most Americans, who experts say are continuing to spend more time dining out and spending time with friends. In fact, approximately one-third of respondents to a recent poll say they believe the pandemic’s over.
“There’s absolutely no behavior change. If anything, behaviors are moving in the other direction,” Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson told Axios.
This news comes after the U.S. reached a grim milestone of more than 1 million coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University. To put that into perspective, that number of lives lost is equivalent to the population of San Jose, California. It’s also significantly higher than the 675,000 who died during the 1918 flu pandemic, and the lives lost in battle in all of America’s wars combined.
Wondering if you should be buying more N95 masks and avoiding indoor gatherings a little more? While that’s a wise choice regardless of your location, we’ve got a list of the states where that’s probably even wiser.
Where covid cases are the highest:
1. Connecticut – 76.8 cases per 100,000 (+48)
2. Rhode Island – 76 cases per 100,000 people (+25.9)
3. Massachusetts – 66 cases per 100,000 (+24)
4. Hawaii – 57 cases per 100,000 (+24.8)
5. New Jersey – 55 cases per 100,000 (+22)
6. Delaware – 51 cases per 100,000 (+28.8)
7. Illinois – 47.9 per 100,000 (+17.5)
8. Wisconsin – 41 cases per 100,000 (+17.7)
9. Michigan – 39.6 cases per 100,000 (+18.6)
10. Florida – 37.5 cases per 100,000 (+17.6)
