Covid-19 Case Growth Not Significant For Most Of The United States

Covid-19 cases are increasing after two months of decline, but the increases are concentrated in rural counties that previously had low infection rates, and that still have below-average rates. Covid-19 isn’t coming back so much as it’s arriving at places it had not previously visited. That’s a gross generalization but what emerges from a county-by-county analysis of daily case data.

The Covid-19 rebound is significant given the harsh economic consequences of our lockdowns. And the lockdowns were only part of the problem. Even in states and counties that allowed businesses to remain open, many people declined to eat out or go shopping. A second wave of cases could certainly trigger renewed fear and hibernation along with another round of government quarantine orders.

The conclusion of this article is based on county-level data compiled by USAFacts, which drew its figures from state and local health agencies. The latest week (through June 24, 2020) of case increase was compared to the average of the two prior weeks. Out of 3,145 counties or equivalents, 1,482 saw growth in the number of new cases relative to prior growth rates. However, most of the counties still have fewer cases per 100,000 residents than the national average. There remain 312 counties with high and growing infection rates, accounting for 46 million people, or 14% of the country.

The counties have this double whammy of rising case counts and above-average cases per capita are mostly small. To eliminate trivial increases in cases, further analysis was limited to those counties whose increase was statistically significant (two standard deviations above zero). Only six of the counties meeting this criterion have populations above 100,000 people. (Humbolt, CA; Johnson, IA; Douglas, OR; Blair, PA; Guadalupe, TX; and Nueces, TX.) Nueces is the largest of the group with 362,000 residents.

So the apparent second wave in the national data really constitute the virus hitting previously safe areas rather than big cities facing major threat.

The path of the virus is hard to pin down, but the data at this point do not indicate a national problem of a second wave of infections.