New COVID-19 Data for All 50 States, and the District of Columbia

The number of patients showing up at U.S. doctors’ offices with illnesses that look like COVID-19 is falling, but the outbreak is still killing people at epidemic levels.

For the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one sign that a disease outbreak may be an epidemic is if the disease accounts for more than about 6% of all U.S. deaths in a given week.

Early U.S. death counts for the week ending May 16 show that COVID-19, and illnesses that often resemble COVID-19, caused about 13% of the deaths reported to the CDC.

That outbreak mortality intensity indicator was over 6% in 21 states.

In recent days, some analysts have suggested that COVID-19 may be hitting harder in high-population states led by Democrats than in more spread out states led by Republicans, but five of the states that rank in the top 10 in terms of outbreak mortality intensity — Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Maryland and Massachusetts — have Republican governors.

Resources

The CDC’s weekly COVID-19 report is available here.
The CDC’s provisional COVID-19 mortality data table is available here.
An overview article about the weekly COVID-19 report for the previous week is available here.

A team at the National Center for Health Statistics, an arm of the CDC, has reported COVID-19 outbreak tracking data in the CDC’s latest COVIDView report.

The report was released Friday — May 22 — and covers deaths and other events that happened during the week ending May 16.

The COVIDView team bases the tables and charts in the report on data from state public health agencies and other public health agencies and programs. Some agencies send the CDC their numbers faster than others do.

For the week ending May 16, for example, the total number of deaths reported for that week as of May 22 was just 53% of the “expected number of deaths,” or the average number of deaths during the comparable weeks in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

The COVIDView team is also wrestling with weaknesses in COVID-19 diagnostic testing efforts.

The COVIDView reports are similar to the CDC’s weekly influenza tracking reports. To get around flu testing gaps, the CDC reports data on confirmed cases of COVID-19 alongside data on similar conditions, such as pneumonia, flu and flu-like illnesses. The CDC also reports total death counts, in addition data on deaths officially attributed to COVID-19, flu and pneumonia.

The COVIDView numbers for May 2 are the latest numbers that appear to be reasonably complete.

As of May 22, the CDC had received reports of 56,606 deaths for the week ending May 2.

The total number of deaths was 8% higher than the expected number.
9,359 of the people who died had laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19.
A total of 12,244 of the people who died, or 22% of all of the people who died, had laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 or COVID-19-like illnesses.

The CDC keeps updating its numbers as new data comes in, and some key indicators can change dramatically over the course of a month.

On April 24, for example, the CDC published its first version of the COVID-19 mortality intensity figure for the week ending April 18: The CDC reported that 18.6% of all people who died that week had died from COVID-19 or similar-looking conditions.

States that were slower to send in their data had higher COVID-19 mortality intensity than the early filers. The CDC has revised the indicator almost every week. In the latest report, the CDC says 27% of all of the people died during the week ending April 18 died of COVID-19 or similarly conditions.

For the ending April 11, the COVIDView mortality intensity indicator has increased from 18.8%, in the April 17 report, to 26.4%, in the report that came out Friday.

State	COVID-19 Deaths	Pneumonia Deaths	Pneumonia, Influenza, or COVID-19 Deaths	Total Deaths*	Percent of Expected Deaths	Percent of Deaths Caused by COVID-19 and Look-Alikes
Deaths by State (Week ending May 2)
Alabama	61	70	116	951	96%	12%
Alaska	0	NA	NA	56	63%	NA
Arizona	88	112	161	1,303	112%	12%
Arkansas	17	40	54	582	97%	9%
California	383	488	675	5,018	99%	13%
Colorado	155	113	195	932	126%	21%
Connecticut	NA	NA	NA	NA	0%	NA
Delaware	57	25	64	169	105%	38%
District of Columbia	38	42	42	133	121%	32%
Florida	267	373	498	4,214	109%	12%
Georgia	165	146	221	1,411	87%	16%
Hawaii	NA	18	19	215	100%	9%
Idaho	NA	13	15	242	100%	6%
Illinois	578	440	723	2,656	130%	27%
Indiana	236	189	331	1,311	108%	25%
Iowa	56	36	82	578	99%	14%
Kansas	18	29	39	489	102%	8%
Kentucky	31	54	79	705	78%	11%
Louisiana	158	108	190	783	95%	24%
Maine	NA	13	19	273	98%	7%
Maryland	361	192	428	1,386	143%	31%
Massachusetts	937	429	1,028	2,087	183%	49%
Michigan	419	294	519	2,220	124%	23%
Minnesota	137	88	189	952	117%	20%
Mississippi	85	71	118	641	113%	18%
Missouri	90	78	139	1,101	90%	13%
Montana	NA	NA	11	151	83%	7%
Nebraska	16	23	33	312	97%	11%
Nevada	40	59	71	476	97%	15%
New Hampshire	32	19	43	259	117%	17%
New Jersey	1,048	641	1,162	2,535	191%	46%
New Mexico	49	30	56	318	89%	18%
New York	877	547	1,036	2,788	150%	37%
New York City	1,237	583	1,318	2,301	240%	57%
North Carolina	NA	NA	NA	NA	1%	NA
North Dakota	NA	NA	11	93	75%	12%
Ohio	205	169	293	2,129	95%	14%
Oklahoma	23	44	57	482	66%	12%
Oregon	13	20	29	536	82%	5%
Pennsylvania	784	395	919	3,226	132%	28%
Rhode Island	57	30	67	158	79%	42%
South Carolina	58	77	117	977	111%	12%
South Dakota	16	13	22	137	101%	16%
Tennessee	27	91	109	1,356	94%	8%
Texas	149	307	394	3,676	104%	11%
Utah	11	12	22	376	113%	6%
Vermont	NA	NA	NA	114	105%	NA
Virginia	221	151	282	1,521	122%	19%
Washington	50	68	93	952	104%	10%
West Virginia	13	14	22	151	59%	15%
Wisconsin	64	53	111	1,106	104%	10%
Wyoming	0	NA	NA	59	117%	NA
Puerto Rico	13	30	41	224	74%	18%
United States	9,359	6,839	12,244	56,606	108%	22%
* Total deaths is less than or equal to the sum of COVID-19 deaths and pneumonia deaths, because some people are classified as dying from both COVID-19 and pneumonia. About 50 people died in the week ending May 2 of confirmed cases of flu. ”NA” here means that a state failed to report death data for the week ending May 2, or that it reported 2 to 9 deaths of a particular type, and the CDC left that number out of the data in an effort to protect people’s privacy.
Source: The CDC’s COVIDView newsletter.

Idaho
Deaths by Week in 3 Places
	COVID-19 Deaths	Pneumonia Deaths	Pneumonia, Influenza, or COVID-19 Deaths	Total Deaths	Percent of Expected Deaths	Percent of Deaths Caused by COVID-19 and Look-Alikes
Feb. 1	0	11	12	249	88%	5%
Feb. 8	0	18	20	293	100%	7%
Feb. 15	0	11	12	279	90%	4%
Feb. 22	0	17	21	318	112%	7%
Feb. 29	0	17	20	289	98%	7%
Marc h 7	0	17	20	278	97%	7%
March 14	0	18	21	284	107%	7%
March 21	0	22	26	308	105%	8%
March 28	NA	14	20	332	120%	6%
April 4	NA	15	22	271	97%	8%
April 11	22	17	34	304	102%	11%
April 18	11	13	19	281	98%	7%
April 25	12	15	24	259	99%	9%
May 2	NA	13	15	242	100%	6%
May 9	NA	NA	11	272	104%	4%
May 16	0	NA	NA	103	51%	NA
Wisconsin
	COVID-19 Deaths	Pneumonia Deaths	Pneumonia, Influenza, or COVID-19 Deaths	Total Deaths	Percent of Expected Deaths	Percent of Deaths Caused by COVID-19 and Look-Alikes
Feb. 1	0	64	67	1,175	95%	6%
Feb. 8	0	53	58	1,050	106%	6%
Feb. 15	0	75	87	1,123	97%	8%
Feb. 22	0	57	71	1,158	100%	6%
Feb. 29	0	54	70	1,134	116%	6%
March 7	0	62	77	1,112	107%	7%
March 14	0	56	88	1,103	104%	8%
March 21	NA	72	95	1,108	105%	9%
March 28	18	73	103	1,141	100%	9%
April 4	75	89	161	1,212	115%	13%
April 11	74	75	142	1,163	117%	12%
April 18	72	52	114	1,129	107%	10%
April 25	47	55	99	1,009	109%	10%
May 2	64	53	111	1,106	104%	10%
May 9	52	48	85	936	111%	9%
May 16	12	20	28	450	95%	6%
New York City
	COVID-19 Deaths	Pneumonia Deaths	Pneumonia, Influenza, or COVID-19 Deaths	Total Deaths	Percent of Expected Deaths	Percent of Deaths Caused by COVID-19 and Look-Alikes
Feb. 1	0	95	114	1,168	103%	10%
Feb. 8	0	95	113	1,170	98%	10%
Feb. 15	0	86	100	1,130	100%	9%
Feb. 22	0	75	84	1,092	97%	8%
Feb. 29	0	83	89	1,108	105%	8%
Marc h 7	0	92	100	1,112	99%	9%
March 14	NA	103	112	1,130	102%	10%
March 21	120	155	246	1,398	126%	18%
March 28	927	593	1,179	2,756	236%	43%
April 4	3,021	1,705	3,463	6,029	542%	57%
April 11	4,576	2,056	4,910	7,620	719%	64%
April 18	3,623	1,439	3,769	5,611	585%	67%
April 25	2,292	1,016	2,408	3,716	399%	65%
May 2	1,237	583	1,318	2,301	240%	57%
May 9	879	398	939	1,810	193%	52%
May 16	325	168	372	1,078	114%	35%