As of March 10, 2023, the death rate from COVID-19 in the state of New York was 397 per 100,000 people. New York is one of the states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

The New York Times is releasing a series of data files with cumulative counts of coronavirus cases in the United States, at the state and county level, over time. We are compiling this time series data from state and local governments and health departments in an attempt to provide a complete record of the ongoing outbreak.

Since late January, The Times has tracked cases of coronavirus in real time as they were identified after testing. Because of the widespread shortage of testing, however, the data is necessarily limited in the picture it presents of the outbreak.

We have used this data to power our maps and reporting tracking the outbreak, and it is now being made available to the public in response to requests from researchers, scientists and government officials who would like access to the data to better understand the outbreak.

The data begins with the first reported coronavirus case in Washington State on Jan. 21, 2020. We will publish regular updates to the data in this repository.

As of March 10, 2023, the state with the highest rate of COVID-19 cases was Rhode Island followed by Alaska. Around 103.9 million cases have been reported across the United States, with the states of California, Texas, and Florida reporting the highest numbers of infections.

From an epidemic to a pandemic The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The term pandemic refers to multiple outbreaks of an infectious illness threatening multiple parts of the world at the same time; when the transmission is this widespread, it can no longer be traced back to the country where it originated. The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide is roughly 683 million, and it has affected almost every country in the world.

The symptoms and those who are most at risk Most people who contract the virus will suffer only mild symptoms, such as a cough, a cold, or a high temperature. However, in more severe cases, the infection can cause breathing difficulties and even pneumonia. Those at higher risk include older persons and people with pre-existing medical conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease. Those aged 85 years and older have accounted for around 27 percent of all COVID deaths in the United States, although this age group makes up just two percent of the total population

Overview

As coronavirus cases have exploded across the country, states have struggled to obtain sufficient personal protective equipment such as masks, face shields, gloves and ventilators to meet the needs of healthcare workers. FEMA began distributing PPE from the national stockpile as well as PPE obtained from private manufacturers to states in March.

Initially, FEMA distributed materials based primarily on population. By late March, Its methods changed to send more PPE to hotspot locations, and FEMA claimed these decisions were data-driven and need-based. By late spring, the agency was considering requests from states as well.

Although all U.S. states and territories have received some amount of PPE from FEMA, the amounts of PPE states have per capita and per positive COVID-19 case vary widely.

The AP used this data in a story that ran July 7.

Findings

• Overall, low population, rural states have the most PPE per positive case as of mid-June. This generally held true across types of equipment.
• The states that had the highest number of total PPE items per coronavirus case as of mid-May were, in descending order: Alaska, Montana, Vermont, Hawaii, Wyoming, and North Dakota. The highest was Alaska with 1,579 PPE items per coronavirus case.
• The states that had the highest number of total items per case as of mid-June were largely the same states — Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, Wyoming, and West Virginia. The highest was Montana with 1,125 PPE items per coronavirus case.
• Conversely, the states that had the lowest amounts of PPE per positive case in mid-May included hotspot states — Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, California, Nebraska, and Iowa. New Jersey was just a couple spots further down. The lowest was Massachusetts with 36 PPE items per coronavirus case.
• The states that had the lowest amounts of PPE per case as of mid-June were largely the same as well — Massachusetts, New York, Iowa, California, and Nebraska. The lowest was Massachusetts with 32 PPE items per coronavirus case.
• When evaluated on a per-capita basis rather than per positive coronavirus case, the picture is different. The District of Columbia received the most PPE per capita in both May and June, although the vast majority of the PPE it received was distributed as of mid-May. Vermont, Kansas, New Jersey, and North Dakota had the next highest numbers of PPE per capita as of both mid-May and mid-June.
• There is no clear pattern of FEMA distribution by party control of states.

About the data

These numbers include material distributed by FEMA and also those sold by private distributors under direction from FEMA. They include materials both delivered to and en route to states.

States have purchased PPE directly in addition to receiving PPE from FEMA or directed there by the agency, and this data only includes the latter categories.

FEMA also distributed and directed the distribution of gear to U.S. territories in addition to states, which are included in FEMA’s release linked below, but not are not included in this data.

FEMA has publicly distributed its breakdown of PPE delivery by state for May and June. FEMA did not provide comprehensive numbers for each state before May.

These numbers are cumulative, meaning that the numbers for May include items of PPE distributed prior to May 14, dating to when the agency began allocations on March 1. The June numbers include the May numbers and any new PPE distributions since then.

The population column, which was used to calculate the numbers of PPE items per state, came from data from the U.S Census Bureau. Since the Census releases annual population data, population data from 2019 was used for each state.

The numbers of coronavirus cases were pulled from the data released daily by Johns Hopkins University as of the dates that FEMA released its distribution numbers — May 14 and June 10.

Caveats

The data includes amounts of gear that had been delivered to the states or were en route as of the reporting dates.

All PPE item numbers above 1 million were rounded to the nearest hundred thousand by FEMA, but numbers lower than that were not rounded.

In some cases, gear headed to a state was rerouted because it was needed more somewhere else or a state decided it did not need it. In some instances, that resulted in states having higher numbers for certain supplies in May than in June.

This data set is EMBARGOED until noon ET Tuesday, June 29. This data is intended for print publication on or after June 29. A story will be filed under the slug US--Virus Outbreak-Rental Assistance.

Overview

The Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with the AP has collected detailed statistics from about 70 agencies that administered rental assistance programs in 2020 with money from the Coronavirus Relief Fund, part of the CARES Act. These figures show how much money these agencies planned to spend on rental assistance and how much they actually spent. We also have data showing how many households received assistance and how many applications were submitted.

An additional data sheet shows how much money was allocated for rental assistance from all sources (not just CRF money) per renter-occupied household in 2020 and statewide eviction rates in 2016, the latest available data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Findings

• All together, about 70 state and local agencies set aside $2.7 billion from the Coronavirus Relief Fund in 2020 for rental assistance programs. More than $425 million of that — 16 percent — was either reallocated for other COVID-related expenditures or remained unspent by March 31, 2021.
• Four states with comparatively high historic eviction rates allocated very little for renters in 2020. These states — Georgia, West Virginia, South Carolina and Oklahoma — are run by Republican governors.
• Onerous requisites, such as lengthy forms and extensive documentation requirements, prevented many applicants from accessing rental assistance funds. In New York, for example, tenants had to prove they were rent-burdened before the pandemic to qualify for assistance in the first round of funding; only $47.5 million wound up getting spent on rental assistance, out of $100 million allocated by the state legislature.

Methodology

The Center for Public Integrity started with a spreadsheet produced by the National Low Income Housing Coalition that showed every known rental assistance program in the United States as of Dec. 23, 2020. The detailed spreadsheet included how much money had been allocated per program and the source of those funds. Public Integrity isolated only the programs that were categorized as being funded by the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which was part of the CARES Act. We focused on the CRF because it was the largest single source of rental assistance in 2020. We contacted more than 70 agencies to find out how much money they wound up spending.

For the second set of data, we used the same NLIHC spreadsheet but tallied all allocations — regardless of funding source — for each state and divided that number by the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of renter-occupied households in each state (from American Community Survey table S2502, five-year estimate, 2015 to 2019). We also included the statewide eviction rates as of 2016 (the most recent available) published by the Eviction Lab.

Included Data

• 1-crf_programs.csv: Details for every known rental assistance program as of Dec. 23, 2020, that was funded by the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

  Columns A through E were collected by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and they show the following: Geographic Level; State; City/County/Locality, if applicable; Program Name; and Administering Agency.

  Columns F through L were collected by Public Integrity and the Associated Press. Those columns show amount of CRF money set aside in 2020, the amount spent on rental assistance by March 31, 2021, the amount reallocated or unspent by March 31, 2021, the percent unspent by March 31, 2021, the number of households that received assistance by March 31, 2021, the number of applications received by March 31, 2021, and notes about the data.

• 2-state_totals.csv: State-level totals for all known allocated rental assistance funding, regardless of funding source, along with the number of renter-occupied households in each state from 2015 to 2019, the statewide eviction rate as of 2016, and the amount of allocated rental assistance funding per renter-occupied household.

Caveats

• If your city, county or state does not appear to have allocated any money for rental assistance, check with your local and state officials or your governor’s office to find out if a program was indeed administered. We can’t ensure that every program wound up on the NLIHC’s original list.
• We only focused on programs that were categorized as being part of the Coronavirus Relief Fund, but your city, county or state may have had a rental assistance program with other sources of funding.
• The per-capita funding figures do not necessarily indicate that those state governments administered rental assistance programs. Some — or all — of that per-capita money could have been administered by local governments. For example, Georgia did not administer a statewide rental assistance program in 2020; the per-capita figure for Georgia reflects money spent in that state by local governments. For a full list of programs, visit NLIHC’s broader list at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hLfybfo9NydIptQu5wghUpKXecimh3gaoqT7LU1JGc8/edit#gid=1851738141.
• Eviction rates were not available for these four states in 2016: Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Attribution

“According to data obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, The Associated Press and the National Low Income Housing Coalition”.

Contact reporter Sarah Kleiner at skleiner@publicintegrity.org.