The march of the coronavirus across America

JOE BIDEN, America's president, has occupied the White House for 34 days yet the tragedy of covid-19 continues to unfold before his eyes. On February 22nd Mr Biden marked 500,000 official deaths from the disease by observing a candle-lighting ceremony outside the White House while the bells of the National Cathedral chimed 500 times. The pandemic has now claimed more American lives than the country sustained on battlefields during the first world war, second world war and Vietnam war, combined. The true toll, because many deaths are miscounted, is likely to be closer to 600,000.

There are early signs that the tragic second wave in America is coming to an end. The number of new infections is now falling rapidly, halving every 14 days. As a result pressure on hospitals is easing and deaths are falling. Deaths peaked in mid January at 3,300 per day but have since fallen by 42% to 1,900 per day.

The cause of that decline is still unclear. The recent cold weather may have played a part in forcing people to shelter indoors and remain more isolated than they otherwise would. Mr Biden's plea when he took office for Americans to wear a face mask for 100 days may have helped. The vaccination programme may be beginning to bite, too. The country has now administered 63m vaccines, one-quarter of the global total, and Mr Biden is on track to meet his target of getting 150m jabs into the arms of Americans by his 100th day in office on April 30th.

However, herd immunity will take months to achieve, and the sheer scale of infections in America dictates that covid-19 will not be under control for some time. In order to see where the pandemic is currently most severe across the nation, we have created an interactive map of covid-19 cases and deaths. It divides America into 500 areas. For each of these it shows cases and deaths per 100,000 people, so that infection and death rates in, say, New York City and its surrounds (population 40m) can be compared with those in Ironwood, Michigan (population 27,000).

In the charts above we present another way of visualising the pandemic in America. They show 14-day moving averages of cases and deaths for all 50 states. The data can be viewed either as an index (with the peak in each state set at 100) or per 100,000 people. The chart shows that the covid-19 outbreak was primarily confined to north-eastern states in April and May, but is now wreaking havoc almost everywhere.

The table below shows complete state-level data for deaths and cases over the past 14 days. (You can sort each column by clicking on its header.) The Economist updates these statistics twice a day.

Some caution is required when looking at these figures. Differences in testing rates could account for some of the differences in states' reported infection rates. We are also using similar measures to track the path of the coronavirus in Europe. And a more comprehensive but less timely measure of the toll of the pandemic can be found in our excess-death mortality data, which compare overall death rates for countries around the world against their historical averages. ■

To keep up with our coverage of the pandemic, visit our coronavirus hub. Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter.

Sources: Centres for Disease Control and Prevention; Johns Hopkins University CSSE; New York Times; US Census Bureau; The Economist