(Reuters) – The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 dropped 16% to about 7,200 people last week, the first drop in deaths after four weeks of increases, according to a Reuters number of state and county reports.
PHILO PHOTO: Phlebotomists wait to sign blood to test for antibodies to coronavirus (COVID-19) at a pop-up test and research site in Chelsea, Massachusetts, US, August 7, 2020. REUTERS / Brian Snyder
The country posted more than 376,000 new COVID-19 cases before the week ended Aug. 9, averaging roughly 53,000 a day. New cases have now fallen three straight weeks, although the United States still accounts for a quarter of the global total of 20 million cases.
Last week’s decline in new cases came largely from recent hot spots. For example, new cases in Arizona fell by more than 48% in the last week, and on August 9, the state reported fewer than 1,000 cases for the first time since June 29.
The rate of community outbreaks in Florida, California and Tennessee remained high, but they all reported fewer cases than in the previous week, according to the Reuters census.
(Open tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser for a Reuters interactive)
Hawaii had kept the virus in check for most of the summer, but new cases more than doubled last week to more than 1,200. On August 6, Hawaii Governor David Ige said he would reintroduce travel restrictions to inland islands that would require people to be quarantined for 14 days.
In South Dakota, new cases increased for the third straight week. More than 100,000 motorcycle enthusiasts will expect to travel from all over the country to attend an annual rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, which began on August 7th.
Nationally, the share of all tests that returned positive for the new coronavirus remained stable at 8%, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project, an attempt to run through the volunteer to track the outbreak. Mississippi and Texas had the highest positive rates in the country at 21%.
Only 15 states report a positive rate below 5%, which is the threshold considered by the World Health Organization, as it suggests that there are more cases in the community that have not yet been discovered.
(Graph: Tracking of the new coronavirus in the US – tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T) (Graph: Worldwide country-by-country interactive tracker – tmsnrt.rs/2WZPuOh)
Graphic by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri; Edited by Tiffany Wu
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