Then there are the states where the first peak has not yet significantly declined. There are 30 states which fall into this category, including California, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota. Mississippi, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Most of these states have rolled back restrictions on movement and forced closures of businesses but did so before there had been any appreciable fall in cases. Currently there is no obvious trend either way.

But then there are six states which, worryingly, are showing a detectable second spike. In Florida, for example, new infections fell from over 1000 a day in early April to around 600 a day a month later. The state began to reopen on 4 May. Since then, however, new infections have climbed back to their previous peak, reaching 1419 on 4 June – the highest yet. It is a similar story in Arkansas, where cases had fallen from a peak of 402 on 22 April to 27 on 15 May before rising again to a new high of 450 on 6 June. In Vermont the epidemic seemed all but over on 12 May when zero cases were recorded. For three weeks after that cases remained low. But over the past week there has been a rebound, with 72 cases reported on 4 June. The other states with a discernible second spike are Alaska, Montana and Washington.

Is this a dire warning of what is to come?