To help provide a detailed picture of the past, present and future of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, here are four ways of thinking about it in hundreds of metro areas across the country, using data compiled by The New York Times. This page will be updated regularly.

The simplest way to track the progress of an outbreak is by seeing how many new cases and deaths are reported in a given area each day.

These are days with a data reporting anomaly. Read more here

These are days with a data reporting anomaly. Read more here

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New cases per day New York City area 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 cases March April May June July Aug. Sept. Probable data released New cases 7-day average These are days with a data reporting anomaly. Read more here New deaths per day New York City area 0 500 1,000 deaths March April May June July Aug. Sept. New deaths 7-day average These are days with a data reporting anomaly. Read more here Metro and micropolitan areas are bigger than just the city limits of a given place — they often include the surrounding suburbs and exurbs.

2. Where the Outbreak Is Worst Now

The metro areas with the greatest number of new cases, relative to their population, in the last two weeks:

Average daily cases, last two weeks Metro or micro area Population Recent cases Daily Per 100k 1 La Crosse, Wis. 136,616 1,472 77.0 2 Farmington, Mo. 67,215 673 71.5 3 Pine Bluff, Ark. 87,804 841 68.4 4 Bismarck, N.D. 133,179 1,232 66.1 5 State College, Pa. 162,385 1,345 59.2 6 Appleton, Wis. 237,974 1,732 52.0 7 Huntsville, Texas 87,622 636 51.8 8 Oshkosh-Neenah, Wis. 171,907 1,245 51.7 9 Green Bay, Wis. 322,906 2,248 49.7 10 Platteville, Wis. 51,439 355 49.3 11 Dubuque, Iowa 97,311 665 48.8 12 Stevens Point, Wis. 70,772 483 48.7 13 Cookeville, Tenn. 114,272 776 48.5 14 Gainesville, Fla. 287,625 1,953 48.5 15 Cape Girardeau, Mo. 96,765 651 48.1 16 Pullman, Wash. 50,104 336 47.9 17 Jackson, Tenn. 129,511 859 47.4 18 Tallahassee, Fla. 387,227 2,544 46.9 19 Ontario, Ore. 54,522 350 45.9 20 Stillwater, Okla. 81,784 523 45.7 510 New York City area 20.0 mil. 11,799 4.2 10 20 30 40 50 60 Limited to areas with at least 50,000 people. Recent cases are those announced in the last two weeks, but in some cases may have taken place earlier because of delays in reporting.

Here, we’ve limited the window of cases to those within the last two weeks. Scaling those cases by the population of the area can help give a sense of the prevalence of the illness there and how strained a community’s health care system may be. Of course, case counts are subject to variable rates of testing — cases could fall in places simply because fewer tests are being done — so moderate changes in rankings on these tables may not always be meaningful.

3. Where There May Be Bad News Ahead

Here, the metro areas where new cases are rising the fastest, on a population-adjusted basis:

Where new cases are increasing fastest Metro or micro area A week ago Now Change per 100k 1 Oshkosh-Neenah, Wis. 371 874 293 2 Augusta, Ga. 624 2,219 262 3 Dubuque, Iowa 210 455 252 4 Pine Bluff, Ark. 320 521 229 5 Longview, Texas 183 663 218 6 Platteville, Wis. 129 226 189 7 Sherman-Denison, Texas 0 256 188 8 Ionia, Mich. 21 140 184 9 Provo-Orem, Utah 1,431 2,596 180 10 Marinette, Wis. 41 153 177 11 Winona, Minn. 72 159 172 12 Appleton, Wis. 673 1,059 162 13 La Crosse, Wis. 626 846 161 14 Manhattan, Kan. 114 271 159 15 Boulder, Colo. 487 974 149 16 Tucson, Ariz. 608 2,155 148 17 Sioux City, Iowa 418 667 147 18 Kalispell, Mont. 45 197 146 19 Rexburg, Idaho 133 201 128 20 Green Bay, Wis. 926 1,322 123 270 New York City area 5,398 6,401 5.0 -200 -100 0 100 200 Limited to areas with at least 50,000 people. Figures are sorted by the difference between the number of cases in the past week compared with the week prior.

4. The Places Hit Hardest

Below, the metro areas that have had the highest cumulative case rates since the start of the outbreak:

Cumulative confirmed cases Metro or micro area Population cases Per 1,000 1 El Centro, Calif. 181,215 11,606 64.0 2 Gallup, N.M. 71,367 4,300 60.3 3 Eagle Pass, Texas 58,722 3,535 60.2 4 Yuma, Ariz. 213,787 12,594 58.9 5 Pine Bluff, Ark. 87,804 5,065 57.7 6 Rio Grande City, Texas 64,633 3,706 57.3 7 Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas 423,163 22,544 53.3 8 Show Low, Ariz. 110,924 5,751 51.8 9 Sioux City, Iowa 169,878 8,731 51.4 10 Lake City, Fla. 71,686 3,667 51.2 11 Hanford-Corcoran, Calif. 152,940 7,544 49.3 12 Corpus Christi, Texas 452,534 22,005 48.6 13 Palestine, Texas 57,735 2,801 48.5 14 Yakima, Wash. 250,873 12,148 48.4 15 Laredo, Texas 276,652 13,369 48.3 16 Marion, Ohio 65,093 3,072 47.2 17 Miami 6.2 mil. 289,058 46.9 18 Milledgeville, Ga. 53,347 2,447 45.9 19 Huntsville, Texas 87,622 3,887 44.4 20 Ontario, Ore. 54,522 2,392 43.9 105 New York City area 20.0 mil. 570,821 28.5 1 2 5 10 20 50 Limited to areas with at least 50,000 people.

As the pandemic progresses, the number of cases per capita can provide a good measure of the prevalence of coronavirus in a community, even if the deadliest period of the outbreak has passed, as it may have in places like Seattle, New York and New Orleans.

There are other measurements that would be helpful in understanding the progress of the epidemic in different places, such as the number of new hospitalizations, the number of tests administered or the number of people showing any symptoms of respiratory illness. But confirmed coronavirus cases, however incomplete, are the most useful daily statistics currently available at a local level everywhere in the country.

About the data

The Times has identified the following reporting anomalies or methodology changes in the data: The Times began using deaths reported by the New York State Health Department instead of the city's health department. New York State released backlogged confirmed deaths from April 17 and April 18. New Jersey began reporting probable deaths. New York City released deaths from earlier periods but did not specify when they were from. Our database changed to record deaths by New York City residents instead of deaths that took place in New York City. New York City removed four previously reported deaths after reviewing records.

In data for the United States, The Times is now including cases and deaths that have been identified by public health officials as probable coronavirus patients. Some states and counties only report figures in which a coronavirus infection was confirmed through testing. Because confirmed cases are widely considered to be an undercount of the true toll, some state and local governments have started identifying probable cases and deaths using criteria that were developed by states and the federal government.

Confirmed cases and deaths are counts of individuals whose coronavirus infections were confirmed by a laboratory test. Probable cases and deaths count individuals who did not have a confirmed test but were evaluated using criteria developed by national and local governments. Some governments are reporting only confirmed cases, while others are reporting both confirmed and probable numbers. And there is also another set of governments that are reporting the two types of numbers combined without providing a way to separate the confirmed from the probable. The Times is now using the total of confirmed and probable counts when they are available individually or combined. Otherwise only the confirmed count will be shown.

Governments often revise data or report a large increase in cases on a single day without historical revisions, which can cause an irregular pattern in the daily reported figures. The Times is excluding these anomalies from seven-day averages when possible.

Read more about the methodology and download county-level data for coronavirus cases in the United States from The New York Times on GitHub.