Below are eight national COVID-19 trends as of Aug. 17, per The New York Times.
1. U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations are at their second highest peak, behind only last winter. Seven states — Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon and Washington — are recording higher hospitalization levels than their winter and summer peaks. Hospitalization rates appear to be slowing or leveling off only in Missouri and Nevada, where hospitalization rates rose rapidly at the start of summer.
2. More than 700 U.S. virus deaths are being reported daily, a figure that has more than doubled since the start of August. Deaths remain significantly below previous records but can lag by several weeks.
3. The pace of vaccination has increased slightly over the past few weeks to about 700,000 daily doses administered. In total, 50.9 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated.
4. Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi all have surpassed past known case records.
5. New case numbers are leveling off or dropping in some areas that first experienced major summer outbreaks, such as the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas; Las Vegas; and Jacksonville, Fla.
6. Rural areas in the Pacific Northwest have seen a significant uptick in cases, with Oregon recently hitting a weekly case record and reinstating an indoor mask mandate.
7. Cases are rising in the Upper Midwest and Northeast, but remain much lower than figures in other regions. On a per capita basis, the counties that include Miami and Tampa, Fla., are averaging more than six times as many daily COVID-19 cases compared to the counties that include Chicago and Detroit.
8. Nationwide, COVID-19 testing has increased by 36 percent over the last two weeks.