The country reported nearly 1.5 million new infections last week, up 16.5% from the previous seven days. (For a state-by-state interactive, open tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser)Many testing centers were closed for the year-end holiday, likely reducing the number of cases reported last week. Health officials have warned that figures this week may be abnormally high due to a backlog of data. Arizona, Tennessee and South Carolina reported the most new cases per capita last week, according to the Reuters analysis. Across the United States, 13.6% of tests came back positive for the virus, up from 10.3% the prior week, according to data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project.
