Medical staff wearing full PPE push a stretcher with a deceased patient into a car outside of the Covid-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center on June 30, 2020 in Houston, Texas.
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More than a third of U.S. states reported record highs in average new Covid-19 cases as deaths across the U.S. gradually rise, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Across the U.S., 19 states saw new cases reach daily records on Sunday, based on an average over the previous seven days, according to the data. That includes Texas, Georgia and Florida, which reported a shattering 15,300 new cases on Sunday. CNBC uses a seven-day trailing average to smooth out spikes in data reporting to identify where cases are rising and falling.
The United States was one of two countries that accounted for half of the new daily coronavirus cases reported across the globe, the World Health Organization said Monday. The U.S. and Brazil reported 111,319 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, roughly half of all the new cases across the world.
“Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference from the agency’s Geneva headquarters.
Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus-related deaths are on the rise in a handful of states, including Texas, Florida and Arizona.
Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. have declined or remained relatively stable for weeks, even though cases have more than doubled since mid-May. After peaking at an average of more than 2,000 deaths per day just three months ago, primarily driven by New York and New Jersey, fatalities in the U.S. have been slowly declining — falling to an average of less than 600 fatalities a day from June 23 through July 8.
But the daily death toll appears to be on the rise again in the U.S., epidemiologists say. As of Sunday, the U.S. is averaging just over 700 new deaths a day.
Arizona has reported an average of about 59 new coronavirus-related deaths per day over the past seven days as of Sunday, up more than 78% compared with a week ago, according to CNBC’s analysis of data compiled by Hopkins.
Deaths in Texas surged 140% from last week to an average of about 82 coronavirus-related deaths per day over the past seven days as of Sunday, according to CNBC’s analysis of data compiled by Hopkins.
It shouldn’t “be a surprise” if the global death toll from the coronavirus begins to pick up pace again as the pandemic shows signs of accelerating across the globe, World Health Organization officials said last week.
They warned that there’s a lag between rising cases and increasing deaths. It takes weeks after contracting the virus to fall seriously ill and potentially die from the coronavirus.
“Some of this may be lag, we may see deaths start to climb again because we’ve only really experienced this rapid increase in cases over the last five to six weeks,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program. “I don’t think it should be a surprise if the deaths start to rise again. It will be very unfortunate, but it may happen.”
There have been advancements in caring for coronavirus patients, which has allowed for those most at risk to receive treatment quickly, Ryan said.
Some epidemiologist in the U.S. say that could help improve mortality rates. Many states with surging cases have also noted that the recent surge has been driven largely by younger patients, who tend to have milder cases.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has noted that the average age of people getting infected now is 15 years younger than it was a few months ago.
Younger people should remember that when they’re infected, there’s the likelihood that they could spread the disease to people who are at high risk of serious illness, he said.
— CNBC’s Will Feuer and Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.
