Tracking coronavirus growth rates in metro areas around the nation.
Tracking coronavirus growth rates in metro areas around the nation.
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How Severe Are Coronavirus Outbreaks Across the U.S.? Look Up Any Metro Area
ByJosh KatzKevin QuealyandMargot Sanger-KatzUpdatedJune  1, 2020,  9:54 AM E.T.
These charts are no longer as useful for tracking the state of the pandemic. Here arefive other ways to monitor the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
The New York metropolitan area has becomethe epicenterof the coronavirus pandemic, but growth in cases and deaths has come to other parts of the United States.
The accompanying charts, which will be updated regularly usingdata collected by The New York Times, describe the outbreak for metro areas around the country. Metropolitan areas are helpful units because they reflect the places where people socialize, commute and share health care resources.
Cumulative Cases and Deaths by Metro Area
These charts show cumulative coronavirus cases and deaths for metropolitan areas over time.  Use the search box to compare growth rates in an area near you.
What to look forFocus on the slope of the curve more than the absolute number of cases or deaths. Flatter is better.
The numbers are being measured on what’s called a logarithmic scale: A straight line means exponential growth, and the steeper a line, the faster the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases or deaths is doubling. New metropolitan areas will be added to these charts once they experience 200 confirmed cases or 100 deaths.
We are showing both case and death data because both have strengths and weaknesses. Cases give a better sense of what’s going on right now (deaths lag infections by weeks). But case counts are subject to variable rates of testing: Cases could fall in places simply because fewer tests are being done. Deaths from the virus are more likely to be counted.
In addition to metropolitan areas in the United States, we've included one foreign metropolitan area. The Lombardy region of Italy was an early and severe hot spot for the disease and may be helpful for comparison. Data thereis not perfecteither.
Daily Growth Rate
Another way of looking at how cases and deaths are changing in metropolitan areas is to plot the growth rates directly.
What to look forRoot for these to go to zero. Low-seeming numbers still mean a lot of growth: A 20 percent daily growth rate means cases or deaths will double in less than four days.
With epidemics, these rates are often more important than the current totals because they tell us whether things are getting better or worse. A reading of 40 percent on the charts above means that, on average, the number of deaths in a place has been increasing by 40 percent each day. A reading of 100 percent would mean that cases were doubling daily.
Growth Rates by Case Count
The charts below show the growth rate by the number of cases or deaths in a given metropolitan area.
What to look forHigh growth rates combined with a lot of confirmed cases is a bad combination.
Here, the growth rate is shown based not on how long an area has had coronavirus cases or deaths, but on how large its outbreak has become. If a line extends farther to the right, there’s a higher chance that people could become sick and die if the growth rate remains high.
New Cases and Deaths per 1,000 People
Instead of adding up all of the confirmed cases and deaths from the start of the epidemic, these charts focus on new cases in various places, adjusted according to the population size of that metro area.
What to look forIf the number of new cases starts to fall, the severity of the initial outbreak may have peaked.
This chart can make it easier to see places where the concentration of infections or deaths has waxed and waned. Places that are high on the right-hand side of the chart have experienced a lot of recent infections or deaths, relative to their populations. Places where the lines point down might have begun to flatten their local curves.
Maps of Metro Areas
These maps show the number of cases or deaths in all of the country’s metropolitan and micropolitan areas over the last four weeks.
Recent confirmed cases, last 4 weeks
Per thousand residents
Recent deaths, last 4 weeks
Per thousand residents (in places with 3 deaths or more)
Because some parts of the country are more densely populated than others, these numbers are all adjusted for how many people live in each area. The darker an area appears, the greater proportion of its population is infected. This map also shows the parts of the country that are not categorized as metropolitan or micropolitan areas by the U.S. Census Bureau; those are shaded in light gray. Places without substantial cases or deaths are shaded in dark gray. These measurements focus on recent cases and deaths to give a sense of where coronavirus infections are widespread now.
Tracking the Coronavirus
Countries
State by state
Source:New York Times databaseof reports from state and local health agencies and hospitals
Based on reporting by Mitch Smith, Karen Yourish, Sarah Almuhktar and Danielle Ivory.