Massachusetts

New update with state data up to midnight eastern: tally shows over 4000 tests.

https://t.co/Zc39AZVRge

WA and CA have conducted the most tests and have the most cases. Big gaps in our testing capacity knowledge: MA, TX, GA, PA.

We await updates from Massachusetts and California, which will also have large numbers. Colorado's numbers are also climbing, standing at 28 cases as of their last update.

As we close up the shop for the night, we've been able to track just under 8000 people tested for #COVID19. That's not a lot, and just a few thousand tests got reported today.

We're missing fresh total test numbers from some big states: CA, NY, and MA.

https://t.co/iERV2wLMmu https://t.co/dsb0GejjeI

MA's case is instructive on why this is important. MA reported a cumulative 92 cases Tuesday. Wednesday's total went up only to 95. Is that because they didn't test many people (bad) or they tested a lot and only got three positives (good)?

This puts MA citizens in a real bind. How can you make decisions if you don't know the severity of the outbreak? @MassGovernor @MassDPH The public needs comprehensive numbers.

The current number of people tested is now up to almost 14,000. Still far, far too low.

GA, MA, TX remain data holes.

To clarify: these states only post positive tests, which doesn't allow us to understand the scope of their testing. Thankfully @WBUR got a number of out MA. 95 positives out of "more than 200" tests. Even if "more than 200" means 299, that's not good. https://t.co/uQPTQsetk5

These numbers are a lower bound for a few reasons:

1. We are still waiting on accurate negative test counts from CA, MA, GA, and TX, among other states.
2. Commercial labs only report positive results to the states.

Closing up the shop for the night. We're showing 19,066 tests. 2,182 positives. Here are the four states with the largest known outbreaks: WA, NY, CA, MA. https://t.co/LrCchHRS3V

The biggest news today is that we got a fresh total test number from MA, which had been lacking. We do not have a fresh number for Washington State, which is doing the most testing. Among smaller states, the situations in Louisiana and Colorado stand out. https://t.co/qSmFF4SLva

@joshtpm Washington and New York are driving the numbers. We're falling further behind on CA testing numbers. Now that MA is out in the open, the other big question mark is TX.

By known positive tests, the 10 states with the highest per capita number of cases are: Washington New York Colorado Massachusetts Louisiana Rhode Island New Jersey South Dakota New Hampshire Georgia

One positive development is that Texas, Massachusetts, and several other states have begun to include total testing numbers from commercial labs, which are coming online. TX, for example: https://t.co/motgizKtMQ

Worse, we're not able to tell you what the scale of that problem is on a state-by-state or national level. In Texas, private labs are doing ~50% of the testing. In MA, it's less than 25%. In AK, it's closer to 10%.

@davidgaliel @AdrienneLaF @TheAtlantic Most states report people tested explicitly. There are a few questions on the samples issue, specifically Massachusetts. Believe me, we'd like clarity on this, but I don't think it's nearly as big an issue with the dataset as the commercial testing invisibility. -@alexismadrigal

New York accelerated past Washington in per capita positive tests. Here’s the top 10:

New York Washington New Jersey Louisiana DC Michigan Massachusetts Colorado Rhode Island Illinois

Eight states have now reported over 1,000 deaths. Here are the 15 hardest-hit states. Massachusetts is a state we're keeping a close eye on right now. Last Saturday, MA reported 87 deaths. Today, 156. https://t.co/kMg96woG8j

Connecticut reported its single largest increase daily death toll.

Other states we're watching for Tuesday: Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kentucky. https://t.co/iVJQMeS7yQ

Many states reported a huge number of tests, including a known backlog clearing from MA (30k+). NY reported almost 50k tests; TX over 20k.

AL, CA, FL, GA, IL, MA, NY, TN, TX all reported over 10k tests.

@covidtrace1 @dougnlamb @sonofrona @alexismadrigal We do, when that is possible (see, recently: MA and WA). It's not always possible. They just dump a bunch of negatives every few days. You could smooth out a lot of it with some multi-day averaging. -@alexismadrigal

We have a correction: in cleaning some older data, we introduced too high of a number into MA data over the weekend. This made yesterday's new test number lower than it should have been. We regret the error.

With the fix in, the recent numbers are smoother, which is good. https://t.co/LxWwoUVkGC

The increase in testing was broadly distributed among the states. These states all reported over 10k tests today.

CA: 29,648 FL: 20,294 GA: 19,323 IL: 14,821 MA: 13,989 MN: 10,238 NY: 26,802 TN: 17,583 TX: 36,985 VA: 14,139

The increase in testing was broadly distributed among the states. These states all reported over 10k tests today.

CA: 29,648 FL: 20,294 GA: 19,323 IL: 14,821 MA: 13,989 MN: 10,238 NY: 26,802 TN: 17,583 TX: 36,985 VA: 14,139

9 states reported over 50 deaths:

California: 98 Florida: 74 Illinois: 102 Indiana: 54 Massachusetts: 130 Michigan: 154 New Jersey: 204 New York: 299 Pennsylvania: 64

The 7-day rolling average of deaths for Texas and Florida has now surpassed some early hotspots like Michigan and Massachusetts.

The trajectory looks more like harder hit states like New Jersey. https://t.co/D49edXZKXT

Some of the testing fall off is attributable to IT trouble in MA today and storm-related closures in FL. Still, the problem is broader. Weekly testing declined for the first time ever in our dataset. https://t.co/50oeo4GU0l

Massachusetts revised their probable case definition, resulting in a drop of 7,757 cumulative cases. To allow a more reasonable view of the current nationwide trends, we placed a zero for MA's daily cases today. https://t.co/KdDo6UJR2C

Where possible, we now use states’ “Test Encounters” or “Specimens” as the unit for these total tests, rather than “Unique People.” (This is all fairly complicated, there’s tons of detail in the blog post.) So far, we’ve switched CO, MA, ND, and RI w/ many more on deck.

The following jurisdictions did not report today: AS, CT, FL, KS, KY, LA, MA, MI, MN, MP, NC, NH, OH, RI, SC, SD, UT, VI, VT, WY. 10 more reported partial data. Some will report two days of data tomorrow.

Zooming into the state level, more than 10 states broke case records today: AK, AR, AZ, DE, IN, MA, ME, NJ, PA, RI, and VT. Note: AZ had a higher count on Dec. 1, but it was a data backlog. https://t.co/ao6T6EQxiH

20 states provided no update: AK, CA, CT, DC, ID, KS, KY, LA, MA, MI, MN, MP, NC, ND, NH, OH, RI, SC, SD, UT, VT.

7 other states made partial updates.

On a more hopeful note, hospitalizations declined in almost every state over the past week. Only New York saw an increase in hospitalized patients (4% higher), while MA was essentially flat. https://t.co/TlTFT1oJjl

Today’s update includes no data from CT, KS, LA, or RI, and no data except hospitalizations from AL. The MA update includes data from approximately 24,800 PCR tests not reported yesterday due to a technical problem.