President Donald Trump posted his "Opening Up America Again" guidelines on April 16 to give Americans an idea on when lockdown measures might begin to ease and to offer hope that an end was, indeed, in sight.
In order to start lifting restrictions and opening businesses, the publication said that states need to show two weeks of downward trends of new COVID-19 cases or positives tests.
So far, according to a new Axios report, not many states are meeting that standard.
What are the numbers?
Included in the president's "proposed state or regional gating criteria" that each state should "satisfy before proceeding to phased comeback" was that there should be a "downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period" or a "downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of total tests within a 14-day period (flat or increasing volume of tests)."
So how are the states doing? According to data from Johns Hopkins University mapped out by Axios — not great.
The outlet compared each state's one-week average from Monday, April 27 to Monday, May 4.
Only a dozen states are moving in the right direction.
More than a third (20) of the states — plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico — still had a growing number of cases over the last week.
It's important to note that some of the states' increases may be attributable to better testing and not because coronavirus outbreaks are "getting dramatically worse," as Axios noted. Which is why, the outlet noted, "health officials are also pulling in other metrics — including the number of deaths, the number of hospitalizations and the percentage of tested patients who test positive. A higher percentage means you're probably missing people."
With that said, the president's guidance does say that a steady decrease in cases should be a benchmark before a state really starts opening up.
The 10 states with biggest drops in cases
No. 1: Wyoming -63%
No. 2: Arkansas -61%
No. 3: Montana -50%
No. 4: New York -38%
No. 5: Connecticut -36%
No. 6: Massachusetts -31%
No. 7: Colorado -27%
No. 8: Rhode Island -26%
No. 9: South Dakota -24%
No. 10: New Jersey -24%
The 10 states with the biggest increases in cases
No. 1: Minnesota +155%
No. 2: Nebraska +57%
No. 3: Iowa +42%
No. 4: New Mexico +41%
No. 5: Wisconsin +36%
No. 6: Tennessee +36%
No. 7: Kansas +34%
No. 8: Texas +34%
No. 9: Arizona +33%
No. 10: New Hampshire +32%