Oct. 11 (UPI) — New COVID-19 cases in the United States continued to rise at their highest rates since August amid surges in states like Montana.
The Johns Hopkins University global tracker reported 54,639 new cases and 618 deaths on Saturday, the fourth consecutive day with more than 50,000 deaths, a level of daily increase not seen since August.
Since the first reported case in the country on Jan. 21, the United States has reported world-leading totals of 7,745,951 cases and 214,641 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data.
Johns Hopkins data showed that Montana has reported 5,046 COVID-19 cases from Sept. 30 through Oct. 10 after recording just 5,017 cases in the 150 days between its first reported case on March 13 and Aug. 10.
With 585 new cases Sunday, Montana has reported 18,702 total cases, up from 14,645 as of last Sunday, and a death toll of 210.
California, which leads the nation in COVID-19 cases, reported 3,803 new cases for a total of 846,579 while adding 64 deaths for a death toll of 16,564, which is second in the nation.
Texas reported the nation’s second-highest case total at 792,478, with an addition of 2,262, as well ass 16,557 deaths, including 31 new ones, in third ahead of New Jersey with 16,274.
Third place Florida tallied 5,570 new cases and 178 deaths over two days on Sunday after the state did not report data on Saturday while officials worked to strike hundreds of thousands of duplicate test results resent on Friday by Helix Laboratory, a private testing lab.
Sunday’s numbers brought Florida’s case total to 734,491 and its death toll to 15,364, which is fifth in the ntation.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced 1,143 new cases for the country’s fourth-highest total at 474,286, while adding five deaths to bring the nation’s leading death toll to 25,574 of confirmed deaths and 33,942 including probable deaths.
The state’s overall positivity reached 0.96% the first time it fell below 1% since Sept. 24. However, in “Red Zone” areas — which account for 2.8% of the state’s population but 14.9% of all positive tests — the positivity rate was 5.74%, while the rate for the rest of the state was 0.84%.
“We are taking strong action to respond to these outbreaks and to stop the spread. Mask up,” Cuomo wrote on Twitter.
No. 5 Georgia reported 1,162 new cases for a total of 331,409 and 23 new deaths, bringing its death toll to 7,416.
