News & Insights

Worldwide cases of COVID-19 have reached 20 million, according to the World Health Organization, with nearly 750,000 deaths. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference that there were still “green shoots of hope,” citing successful control measures in South Asia, New Zealand and more recently Europe.

Here are some other data points as we move through yet another month of the pandemic:

The U.S.: New COVID-19 cases in America totaled less than 50,000 for the second day in a row yesterday. Meanwhile, the country has 5.1 million confirmed cases overall. Some good numbers, courtesy of Johns Hopkins University:

• The seven-day average of new cases was well below the two-week average, at 54,409 compared to 57,433. That’s a sign that new cases are declining across the nation.
• The one-week average was below the two-week average in a clear majority of states (37).
• Deaths, meanwhile, are pretty similar for the one-week and two-week averages (1,051 and 1,049, respectively). Unfortunately, a handful of states are showing a rising death rate.

Children: COVID-19 cases among American kids are rising markedly, according to a new study.

• The number of cases in the last two weeks of July make up a full quarter of all children’s cases since March.
• While kids make up only 8.8% of cases nationwide now, they were only 2% back in April.

A caveat: researchers aren’t sure whether this rise is a product of increased infections or improved testing capacity. And fortunately, children make up only a small proportion of hospitalizations. But this data is at least concerning, as many of the nation’s children prepare to head back to school.