Some 14 U.S. counties are now considered to be at "high" community levels of COVID-19, according to the latest CDC data -- and almost all of them are in New York.
As of Tuesday night, the CDC identified 10 counties in New York state that met the criteria, which is based on new cases per 100,000 population, new hospital admissions per 100,000 population, and a rolling average percentage of hospital beds being used for COVID patients.
The 10 counties span the central portion of the state from north to south -- from St. Lawrence County on the Canadian border, to Broome County about 125 miles northwest of Manhattan.
While COVID levels in the state are still a fraction now of what they were in January, they are also definitely on the rise.
On March 13, the seven-day average of new cases per 100,000 people (the state's recently preferred metric) stood at 8.2, an eight-month low.
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But it has quickly increased since and now stands at 30.7, the highest in nearly three months. (The all-pandemic record, in early January, was 381.7.)
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The situation in New York City is steadily worsening as well. Case counts and transmission levels are on the rise, and in some Manhattan neighborhoods, positivity rates have recently topped 15%.
