Birx: 5 states could be among next coronavirus 'hot spots'

Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, listed several states that could be the next “hot spots” for large numbers of COVID-19 cases, based on how many positive cases they have now.

Video Transcript

DEBORAH BIRX: I just wanted to say one other thing about testing, just to give you the bottom line data of what we're seeing.

We appreciate the groups who are reporting, not everyone is reporting yet. And this is part of us trying to understand at a very granular level.

We do have two states that do have 35% positives, and that's New York and New Jersey. So that confirms very clearly that that's a very clear and important hot zone.

Louisiana, though, has 26% of their tests are positive. Michigan, Connecticut, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois-- so that should tell you where the next hotspots are coming-- are at 15% test positive. And then Colorado, D.C., Rhode Island, and Massachusetts are at 13%.

There's a significant number of states still under 10%, everyone that I didn't discuss.

California and Washington remains steady at an 8% rate.

So what we're seeing, finally, is testing improving, more testing being done. Still a high level of negatives in states without hotspots, allowing them to do more of this surveillance and containment.

And then prioritizing this new rapid test kit to those areas that may not have the same amount of access-- to the Indian Health Services and to the public health institutions and the public health and state lab-- so that they can use that and start forward leaning into surveillance.