In the past week (October 2 through 8), the U.S. reported about 670,000 new cases, according to the CDC. This amounts to:
- An average of 95,000 new cases each day
- 204 total new cases for every 100,000 Americans
- 12% fewer new cases than last week (September 25-October 1)
Last week, America also saw:
- 52,000 new COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals (16 for every 100,000 people)
- 10,000 new COVID-19 deaths (3.1 for every 100,000 people)
- 100% of new cases are Delta-caused (as of October 2)
- An average of one million vaccinations per day (including booster shots; per Bloomberg)
At the national level, COVID-19 cases continue to go down. The U.S. is now seeing fewer than 100,000 new cases a day, and about 62,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19—a 14% drop from last week.
It may feel like the Delta surge is now “over,” but case rates are still incredibly high across the country compared to what we saw earlier this summer. California and Connecticut continue to be the only two states with “substantial” transmission, according to the CDC. Every other state has “high” transmission, meaning over 100 new cases for every 100,000 people in the past week.
Alaska remains the country’s biggest hotspot, with over 800 new cases for every 100,000 people in the past week, per the latest Community Profile Report. Case numbers have dropped a bit since last week—when Alaska hit the highest per-capita COVID-19 case rate of any state during the entire pandemic thus far—but the state’s hospitals are still incredibly overwhelmed. Doctors are rationing care, unable to send most patients on hours-long trips to Washington state.
Other Midwestern states continue to face Delta surges, including Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, and Idaho. All five states have COVID-19 case rates over 500 new cases per 100,000 people in the past week.
Vaccination numbers are going up nationwide, with over one million doses administered each day in the past week. But there’s a key caveat here: many of these doses are booster shots. On Saturday, for example, the CDC reported 1.15 million new doses—including over 500,000 booster shots. The number of people receiving their first doses is the lowest it’s been in months.