Coronavirus picking up again in the USA

From the BBC:

The number of infections is going up.  

With more than two million coronavirus cases, the US has the highest number of confirmed infections in the world - about a quarter of the global total.

The situation got really bad in late March but by May, cases were declining and most states had begun to ease restrictions put into place to halt the spread of the virus.

The number of new cases rarely fell below 20,000 though, because as some states were bringing their outbreaks under control, others were only just beginning to see flare-ups.

The North East has been by far the worst-hit region, with about a quarter of all US cases and more than a third of all US deaths occurring in the states of New York and New Jersey. But in recent weeks, the region has brought its outbreaks under control.

The South and West of the country, on the other hand, have seen a big rise in the number of infections, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project.

There's no debate over whether cases are going up again, but there is over why.

President Donald Trump blames it on increased testing, telling the Wall Street Journal he thinks "testing is overrated" because "in many ways, it makes us look bad."

The US has conducted more tests than any other country - about 25 million so far - so that does go some way to explaining why it has the highest number of cases in the world, although international comparisons are difficult to make for a number of reasons.

But there's plenty of evidence to suggest the recent rise in infections is down to more than just a higher number of people being tested.

Twice last week, Arizona saw more new cases on its own than the entire nine-state North East region and that's not just down to increased testing.

This is clear when you look at the rate of coronavirus tests that are coming back positive.

If lots of tests are being done and the spread of the virus has been reduced, then the positive case rate would go down too. If the virus is still being spread widely, it goes up.

At the moment the positive case rate is just below 5% nationally, which is the level the World Health Organization recommends countries be at or below for 14 days before they ease restrictions on movement.

But about a third of states are above that level, as the chart below shows, and all of them have reopened to some extent over the last month.