In 47 states plus the nation’s capital, a measure of average new infections from one newly infected person is below the key level of 1, signaling that cases are expected to decline, according to covidestim, a modeling project with contributers from Yale School of Public Health, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Stanford Medicine.

That measure, known as the effective reproduction number or Rt, was below 1 in 42 states and the capital a week ago; a month ago it was just nine. Meanwhile, the seven-day average of new cases in the U.S. was 110,232 as of Sept. 27, down from more than 160,000 at the start of September, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data…

Currently, there’s a clear urban-rural divide, with the rate of newly-reported Covid deaths running about 76% higher for rural counties than urban ones, according to CDC data. That had echoes of the U.S.’s 2020 autumn season, when Covid had a particularly bad run in rural America, led by the Dakotas.