Feb. 5. By Dave Yochum. Using Johns Hopkins’ Center for Systems Science and Engineering’s COVID-19 data, along with the US Census Bureau’s population statistics, we computed the number of COVID-19 deaths per ten thousand people in the Southeast United States.

North Carolina is well below the region’s average number of deaths per 10,000, 13.34, at 9.

Mississippi and Louisiana are the highest at 21 and 19 deaths per 10,000 people, respectively.

Four broad regions

We divided the country into four broad segments, with “Southeast” being the largest. Here are the four regions and how some states look on a per 100,000 basis.

National survey

A new national survey puts North Carolina at No. 33 in terms of safest states, and South Carolina at No. 50.

Demographics

New statewide data from the NC Dept. of Health & Human Services shows 35 percent of those deaths attributable to COVID-19 are among those older than 50 years old. Fifteen percent are over 65; 7 percent are over 75.

There have been a total of 9,841 deaths due to COVID-19 statewide, according to NCDHHS. Nationwide, there have been more than 456,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

Hospitalizations

Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 fell to 2,523, the lowest number since Dec. 13.

Testing

The statewide positive test rate is at 7.9 percent, while the positive test rate in Mecklenburg was 10.8 percent in today’s report.

Mecklenburg

There were 492 new cases off COVID-19 county-wide. COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Charlotte Metro area fell from 961 Jan. 18 to 582 currently. There have been 784 total deaths county-wide, up one from yesterday.

North Mecklenburg

Cornelius: 8 new cases, 2,272 cumulative; 21 deaths total.

Davidson: 9 new cases, 1,269 cumulative; 14 deaths total.

Huntersville: 39 new cases, 4,673 cumulative; 43 deaths total.

Median new cases down 15.3% statewide