(Bloomberg) --
North Dakota looks poised to become the No. 1 state in the nation by cumulative Covid-19 cases per capita, having surged past Florida and Mississippi with Louisiana just ahead. South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin and Montana are also quickly adding cases.
The potential for grim new milestones shows the scope of the viral wave sweeping the Midwest and West -- and rural America more generally -- over the past month, and the brutal toll it may exact when the often lagging death reports arrive.
The ranking isn't perfect: It skews toward states with outbreaks later in the pandemic, when testing became more widespread. But it's clear that the impact of rising caseloads is being felt across the health-care system in thinly populated states that were afflicted more recently. The Dakotas and Montana now lead the country in current coronavirus hospitalizations per capita, according to Covid Tracking Project data.
Missouri and Arkansas also are posting current hospitalization rates above 20 per 100,000 residents. Unlike the Dakotas, their case trends look more like steady burns than dramatic explosions, but their hospitalizations have both taken noticeable jumps in October.
The U.S. added 41,571 Covid-19 cases on Monday, pushing the seven-day average to 49,541, the most since Aug. 16, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The rate of positives to tests has also been trending slightly higher. In total, there have been more than 215,000 deaths.
Elsewhere in the U.S.:
- Tennessee posted 2,965 Covid-19 cases on Monday, the most since July 31.
- Across the Northeast, hospitalizations rose from a relatively low base, with New York patients climbing to 878, the highest since June.
- In Colorado, hospitalizations reached the highest since July 21, while the rolling seven-day average of new cases reached a record.
- In Illinois, total deaths have topped 9,000 and current hospitalizations reached the highest since June.
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