Tennessee Has the Worst COVID Outbreak in the U.S.

 ACCORDING TO RECENT DATA, THIS PLACE HAS THE MOST CITIES WHERE CASES ARE RISING THE FASTEST.

As the first doses of coronavirus vaccines begin to ship across the U.S., a grim reality remains: many states continue to break newly reported COVID case, hospitalization, and death records on an almost daily basis. Practically no corner of the nation is unaffected, and we're now beginning to see the full effects of travel and gatherings over the Thanksgiving holiday. But as numbers continue to skyrocket everywhere, one state has become the site of the worst COVID outbreak in the country: Tennessee. 

Tennessee has taken the unenviable top spot from Rhode Island after days of reporting steep increases in cases. The state posted a seven-day average of 7,978 new cases per day, a 68 percent increase over the past two weeks, according to The New York Times. Tennessee is also home to nine of the 20 metro areas that are seeing the fasting growing outbreaks in the U.S.A. at the moment when adjusted for population size.

The recent surge in cases also comes as Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee continues to rebuff advice from local, state, and federal health advisors on issuing a statewide mask mandate. Currently, laws allow for local and county officials to set up mask mandates, with Lee claiming that their use is a matter of personal responsibility that trumps government overregulation.

Still, critics are urging Lee to take further action. “We are quickly losing this war and our hospital capacity is now threatened,” Bill Frist, MD, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader representing Tennessee and former heart and lung transplant surgeon, wrote in a Facebook post on Dec. 15. "The vaccine will not help us in time for this surge. We need leadership at the state level (and county level) to act."

Unfortunately, Tennessee isn't the only state seeing cases surge. Read on to find out which states are home to the highest rate of daily new cases per 100,000 people, according to data from Covid Act Now on Dec. 16.

10- Utah

79.4 daily new cases per 100,000 people

9- Pennsylvania

80.9 daily new cases per 100,000 people

8- California

83.0 daily new cases per 100,000 people

7- Delaware

83.3 daily new cases per 100,000 people

6- Nevada

83.8 daily new cases per 100,000 people

5- Ohio

84.7 daily new cases per 100,000 people

4- Indiana

89.3 daily new cases per 100,000 people

3- Arizona

93.1 daily new cases per 100,000 people

2- Rhode Island

110.2 daily new cases per 100,000 people

1- Tennessee

115.7 daily new cases per 100,000 people