New COVID-19 Report Shows Outbreak Continuing to Smolder

The latest government COVID-19 tracking report shows that outbreak activity appears to be falling in most of the country, but that activity may be starting to creep back up in some states. The number of patients seeking care for the disease from primary care offices, urgent care center, and hospital emergency rooms has fallen to a low level in most of the country. But the number of patients seeking outpatient care for COVID-19 moved up some in Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wyoming. One sign of how rapidly COVID-19 was spreading a few weeks ago is that, in the week ending April 25, about 18% of all U.S. deaths were caused by COVID-19, or by something that looked an awful lot like COVID-19. That's down from 25% for the weeks ending April 11 and April 18. But, in a normal week, fewer than 6% of deaths are caused by pneumonia or a flu-like illness.

Resources

• The CDC's weekly COVID-19 report is available here.
• The CDC's provisional COVID-19 mortality data table is available here.
• An article about the previously weekly COVID-19 report is available here.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began publishing the weekly COVID-19 tracking reports April 3. Confirming COVID-19 cases with lab tests is still difficult and expensive, and many mild COVID-19 cases look like colds, flu or stomach bugs. To make up for the problems with COVID-19 testing, the weekly COVID-19 tracking reports give outpatient visit numbers, hospitalization numbers and death numbers for pneumonia, influenza  and "influenza-like illnesses" as well as for laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19. Public health authorities define an "influenza-like illness" as a patient have a fever over 100 degrees, along with either a cough or a sore throat. The CDC depends on states to collect and report the data, and it notes that the data for the latest few weeks may be especially incomplete. The new report shows that the total number of U.S. deaths was a little below average from Feb. 1 through March 21, but that the total number of deaths might have started to rise significantly above the expected level during the week ending April 4. CDC calculates the "expected" death level figures by looking at the weekly death figures for the previous three-year period The expected death total for a given week is the average number of deaths the CDC has recorded for the comparable week in the year over the previous three-year period. The latest figures show that the total number of U.S. deaths from all causes increased to about 20% over the expected level in the week ending April 11, and about 15% over the expected level during the week ending April 18. State-level figures for April 25 appear to be incomplete. State-level figures for the week ending April 18, which look somewhat more complete, and including New York City, show that the number of deaths in New York City was more than twice as high as the usual level. The total number of deaths from all causes was also high in New York state as a whole, in New Jersey, and in Massachusetts. For the country as a whole, for the entire period from Jan. 25 through April 18, the CDC has reports of a total of 692,949 deaths, compared with an expected total of about 686,000. For that period, for the whole country, the number of deaths the CDC has recorded is about 1% higher than the expected level. .

Deaths by Week
Ending Date	COVID-19 Deaths	Pneumonia Deaths	Flu Deaths	Pneumonia, Flu and COVID Deaths	Total Deaths	Percent of Expected Deaths
Feb. 1	-	3,688	469	4,157	57,266	97
Feb. 8	1	3,672	494	4,167	57,615	97
Feb. 15	-	3,693	517	4,210	56,878	97
Feb. 22	-	3,557	536	4,093	56,806	98
Feb. 29	5	3,626	619	4,247	56,843	99
March 7	25	3,719	583	4,312	56,212	97
March 14	49	3,676	578	4,277	53,968	95
March 21	493	4,150	496	4,907	53,979	95
March 28	2,712	5,624	410	7,463	57,430	103
April 4	8,082	8,724	432	13,148	64,313	115
April 11	12,262	9,841	430	16,744	66,577	120
April 18	10,408	7,606	215	13,663	55,062	101
April 25	3,271	2,806	67	4,777	26,489	49

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Deaths by State* (Week ending April 18)
State	COVID Deaths	Pneumonia Deaths	Total Deaths	Percent of Expected Deaths
Alabama	39	60	740	96%
Arizona	41	74	1,013	106%
California	362	573	5,063	102%
Colorado	147	132	932	109%
Delaware	18	10	111	90%
District of Columbia	17	23	96	98%
Florida	157	309	3,651	102%
Georgia	71	86	1,049	96%
Illinois	408	385	2,482	108%
Indiana	147	147	1,069	101%
Iowa	26	34	523	98%
Kansas	27	30	470	97%
Kentucky	35	51	579	91%
Louisiana	171	114	718	103%
Maryland	250	181	1,185	106%
Massachusetts	855	408	2,139	114%
Michigan	490	373	2,285	110%
Minnesota	61	82	831	102%
Mississippi	48	74	627	102%
Missouri	50	66	923	94%
Nevada	23	29	405	100%
New Hampshire	15	16	238	101%
New Jersey	1,571	970	3,619	135%
New Mexico	11	17	226	91%
New York	1,510	1,003	3,830	124%
New York City	2,772	1,082	4,595	224%
North Carolina	0	0	0	47%
Ohio	23	74	1,306	89%
Oklahoma	21	27	437	88%
Oregon	19	19	406	94%
Pennsylvania	556	359	2,917	82%
Rhode Island	17	10	76	88%
South Carolina	35	64	904	106%
Tennessee	21	85	1,255	100%
Texas	113	268	2,995	99%
Virginia	141	105	1,301	103%
Washington	41	63	765	100%
Wisconsin	48	47	909	104%
Puerto Rico	13	25	257	69%
UNITED STATES	10,408	7,606	55,062	101%
* This table leaves out states that had missing COVID-19 or pneumonia death data.

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