Yesterday the United States reached another grim milestone in its battle with the COVID-19 pandemic: more than 5 million cases, with 1 million of those cases being confirmed in just the past 17 days.Though the 7-day average of new cases has trended downwards for the past 2 weeks— from 67,000 on Jul 22 to 53,905 on Aug 8 — a plateau of 50,000 new daily cases has been established this summer.According to the Wall Street Journal, only 13 states reported higher 7-day averages of new confirmed cases than two-week averages as of Aug.
9, including Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia.