New York is projected to have the highest number of daily COVID-19 cases of any state on New Year's Eve, according to forecasts from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic.
By Dec. 31, the Mayo Clinic's COVID-19 map forecasting tool projects that average daily cases in the U.S. could hit more than 214,000, up from a predicted 171,000 on Christmas Eve. Average daily cases peaked in the U.S. during last winter's surge, when the nation was seeing more than 250,000 infections per day in early January.
The projections come as omicron continues to spread rapidly across the country, now accounting for 73 percent of new cases nationwide.
Here are the 10 states projected to have the highest number of average daily COVID-19 cases on New Year's Eve:
1. New York — 30,872
2. Florida — 18,041
3. Illinois — 13,077
4. Ohio — 11,396
5. Texas — 10,902
6. New Jersey — 10,729
7. California — 10,352
8. Massachusetts — 8,436
9. Pennsylvania — 8,615
10. Wisconsin — 5,455
Note: Mayo Clinic uses a Bayesian statistical model to forecast future cases that automatically updates as new data becomes available. There is an uncertainty interval for forecast values, with lower and upper bounds that are not included in this list. To learn more about the data Mayo Clinic uses to forecast hot spots, click here. Becker's pulled the forecast values on Dec. 23 at 8:50 a.m. CST.