The coronavirus hot spots are shifting to the south and midwest

The densely populated coasts undeniably remain the hardest hit, but if you look at the numbers in terms of recent growth, the Midwest and Southeast begin to look worrying. Several of the small but urgent outbreaks have been connected to meatpacking plants, which are often located in those regions, and have not closed during the shutdown. Cases have bloomed across Minnesota and East Texas. The western edge of Iowa, the northwestern bit of North Carolina, and the border between Arkansas and Tennessee have their own clusters as well.

If we’re looking just at larger metropolitan areas, we can reasonably turn our attention to Chicago, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Dallas and Fort Worth, El Paso, Phoenix, and Minneapolis—each of these cities has a relatively high rate of growth in cases. Other cities that stand out include Savannah, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

It’s still worth considering that if we’re looking at sheer numbers, the virus is still most intense in the Northeast, around New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, with clusters around Chicago, D.C., Boston, Detroit, and New Orleans. But of these large hubs, only Chicago is still experiencing continued growth.