by Calculated Risk on 12/21/2020 07:12:00 PM

Note: The week-over-week growth in positive cases has slowed.  Hopefully that continues.

I'm looking forward to not posting this data in a few months. Please stay healthy!

The US is now averaging close to 2 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 2,076,374 test results reported over the last 24 hours.

There were 178,191 positive tests.

Over 51,000 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 8.6% (red line is 7 day average).  The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by total tests (including pending).

And check out COVID Act Now to see how each state is doing. (updated link to new site)

The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations.

• Record Hospitalizations

• Record 7 Day Average Deaths