October 27, 2020
The United States and the European Union have comparable population sizes, but until recently the trajectories of their COVID-19 outbreaks in recent months have been vastly different. In what many medical experts are now calling a "third wave" of the pandemic, coronavirus cases are rapidly increasing across most US states, and over 41,000 Americans are now hospitalized with COVID-19. Meanwhile, most European countries are fighting a full-blown "second wave" that has seen the continent's latest average mortality rates surpass those of the US, and led many European governments to implement fresh restrictions to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The current situation is a sharp contrast to the disparity seen over the summer, when US cases were spiking across much of the Midwest and South while European countries seemed to have kept the coronavirus (mostly) in check due to stricter adherence to social distancing and mask-wearing. Here's a look at the seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases, and three-day rolling averages of new deaths and new deaths per capita in the EU vs the US since March.