This Is the Deadliest State for COVID-19

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Dec 27, 10:08AM EST · Published Dec 25, 3:16PM EST

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This Is the Deadliest State for COVID-19 — © Joe Raedle / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The U.S. is in for a brutal winter of COVID-19 infections, perhaps worse than the period last December and January. Omicron spreads more rapidly than earlier variants, and people have gathered together in airports, indoor venues, and in their homes. A large portion of the population is not vaccinated. And, there appear to be more breakthrough cases. These cases involve infection among those who are fully vaccinated, including having had a booster. The previous peak of daily cases was above 250,000 a day last January. That level will almost certainly be breached in the days ahead.

What has happened in the last few days that makes this forecast likely? The COVID-19 virus has started another wave of infections in America–the fourth by most measures. It has been triggered, primarily, by the new Omicron variant, which currently accounts for three-quarters of the new cases in the U.S. Its spread outside this country has been extraordinary, overwhelming the U.K. accounting for a remarkable surge in London.

There are several ways to measure how dangerous or deadly a geographic area is. Among these are new cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and vaccinations. And, these can be measured by averages over seven days, or a 14-day period. For vaccinations, the yardstick is the percentage of the population that has received a shot, or two, or three.

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24/7 Wall St. chose the measure of daily deaths averaged over the most recent seven days to pick the deadliest state. The U.S. figure is currently 0.41 per 100,000, up by 62% over the past 14 days, which translates into 1,345 per day. The figure in Alaska is the highest at 1.70. That is an average of 12 deaths a day. Alaska is followed by New Mexico at 1.34 or 28 deaths a day. Next, Michigan has a figure of 1.27 or 126 deaths per day.

Leaders in Alaska have worked to blunt the spread of the virus. According to The Shelton Herald:

Communities across Alaska will have thousands of free at-home COVID-19 test kits to distribute during the holidays, officials say.

Sarah Hargrave, Southeast regional public health nurse manager for the state of Alaska, told KTUU that close to 100,000 kits have been sent across Alaska.

Click here to see which states are fighting COVID-19 most successfully.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.