BUFFALO, N.Y. — "You look across the nation, states are all going up."
That statement came from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo during a press briefing on Monday when comparing positive cases of COVID-19 across the world and US to New York State's numbers.
It's not clear what metric the governor is basing this claim on, but publicly available data from Johns Hopkins suggest that's not entirely true.
Based on 2 On Your Side's review of the data, the average of new cases per 100,000 residents has increased more than 10 percent in 25 states.
Averages in 19 states and the District of Columbia are have changed less than 10 percent since last week. And averages in the six other states have dropped more than 10 percent since last week.
The governor then went on to make this claim.
"New York is the outlier in all of these international and national trajectors. We are the exception to the rule," said Cuomo in the briefing.
Again it's not clear from the governor what metric he's using to make this claim.
The state often uses percent positive when talking about the virus. Remember, the percent positive is the percent of tests each day that come back positive for the virus.
It's an important indicator, but it doesn't tell you everything because the percent can be low in states where there are a lot of new cases as long as a lot of tests are being done. That's why we also look at the number of new cases per 100,000 residents.
And remember that the 7 day rolling average of new cases per 100,000 people has increased more than 10 percent in 25 states since last week, and New York is one of those states.
In fact, the average of new cases per 100,000 residents in New York State increased 56 percent since last week. That's the fourth highest percent increase in the country.
The three states with larger percent increases are New Hampshire, Connecticut and Vermont.
Here's one more statement from the governor that needs more clarification. "Western New York is a hotspot, yesterday was a good day, 1.2 percent."
When the governor says Western New York was at 1.2 percent Sunday, he's referring to the percent of tests that were positive for COVID-19, and he says 1.2 percent was a good day.
So here's what's missing.
The current seven-day rolling average of the percent positive in the region is also 1.2 percent (blue dots in the graph below), so it's not just a one day thing. In addition, the current seven-day rolling average for the entire state is 1.2 percent (gray line in the graph below).
So the most recent testing data for Western New York and the current average for the region are the same as the average for the state.
2 On Your Side reached out to the governor's office multiple times to ask what data they're using to continue calling Western New York a hotspot, but they have yet to respond.
You can watch Monday's press conference below:
