The US is now averaging well over 1 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases – and percent positive – to do effective test-and-trace.
There were 1,682,010 test results reported over the last 24 hours.
There were 232,105 positive tests.
Over 27,000 US deaths have been reported so far in December. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here.
Click on graph for larger image.
This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.
The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 13.8% (red line is 7 day average). The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by the sum of negative and positive results (I don’t include pending).
And check out COVID Exit Strategy to see how each state is doing.
The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations.
Note that there were very few tests available in March and April, and many cases were missed, so the hospitalizations was higher relative to the 7-day average of positive tests in July.
• Record Hospitalizations (Over 108,000)
• Record 7 Day Average Cases
• Record 7 Day Average Deaths