Daily case trends of COVID-19: a comparative analysis of Indiana and Washington State

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense and immeasurable disruption to billions of lives worldwide, and the strain on healthcare workers and facilities will undoubtedly be seen for years to come. Many factors impact the incidence and prevalence of COVID-19 in states, such as policies and legislation, funding, partisanship of the statehouse, vaccination rates, and rurality. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the differences in the daily positive cases between Indiana and Washington State and examine the respective ways each state tried to mitigate the morbidity and mortality of the virus. Data was obtained from the respective state health departments over a period of two and a half years from March 2020 to December 2022. Independent t-tests were used for the analysis of the data between Indiana and Washington. Overall, Indiana had a higher daily positive case rate when compared to Washington. Indiana had a lower vaccination rate and had more hospitalizations and deaths compared to Washington and the US population as a whole.