U.S. National-Level Daily Counts

Figures 1 thru 6 are shown in sequence, top-to-bottom. 

Figure 1 shows national daily testing has been rising rapidly again since mid-July. This is likely due to the spread of the COVID Delta-variant.

Figure 2 shows the number of new daily cases of COVID in the U.S. was steadily dropping from a high of 240,000 cases/day in February 2021.  In June 2021, the number of new daily cases had dropped to about 20,000 new cases per day. But with the new Delta-variant surging, new national case rates have climbed back to around 100,000 new cases per day, back above the daily average of new cases since the start of the pandemic.

Figure 3 displays the 7-day average of daily positivity rates. The daily positivity rates are rising again and are greater than last summer. Currently about 9 percent of all COVID tests result in a positive case diagnosis. The daily positivity rate was roughly 14% as recent as January 2021. Last summer, it peaked at roughly 8%. In spring of 2020, the positivity rate peaked at roughly 23%. This was likely due to most tests being given to only people displaying COVID symptoms in the early months of the pandemic. Test kits were limited then. Best practices to limit the spread of COVID were only beginning to spread to the general population.

Figure 4 shows daily U.S. deaths attributed to the COVID-19 virus were falling sharply all spring but have begun to clim again beginning in July 2021.

Figure 5 is a statistic or trend line which should be taken with a grain of salt. It attempts to calculate a daily death rate based on the number of deaths divided by the number of cases reported for any given day. But deaths generally occur days, weeks or even months after a new case of COVID infection sets in, so this is likely an incorrect chart of limited value. No correcting algorithm to account for the delayed death effect has been applied to the plotted data points or curve.

Figure 6 shows the current daily vaccination shots administered. Even though less than half of all of the U.S. population is vaccinated, the number of shots administered daily had been dropping since late May. Starting in July 2021, vaccination rates began growing again, but unfortunately have been dropping again in recent weeks.

DATA SOURCES:
[1] The COVID test and case data is provided by John Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine and used in accordance with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License.

Prior to JHU, the COVID data was provided by the COVID Tracking Project (CTP) at The Atlantic and used in accordance with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License. The CTP ceased updating data on March 7, 2021. Further updates were continued by JHU.

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[2] The COVID data for deaths on this page is provided by The New York Times, based on reports from state and local health agencies. It is used in accordance with The New York Times and with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

Links to the New York Times data can be found here. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html]

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[3] Vaccination data is provided by the United States Centers for Disease and Control (CDC). For further information, please see: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html