North Carolina in top five for new COVID cases reported daily

North Carolina's daily COVID-19 cases have been trending downward over the last seven weeks, but the state is still one of the worst in the United States for new cases per capita. As the coronavirus death toll surpasses 500,000 nationwide, the state still has work to do when it comes to fighting the virus.

The rolling seven-day average of new cases in North Carolina is down significantly, though, fewer than half the more than 8,000 cases per day the state was seeing at the peak of the pandemic in mid-January.

More than 500,000 in the U.S. have now died from COVID-19 nearly a year into the pandemic, according to an NBC News tally. There have been nearly 11,000 COVID-19 deaths in North Carolina according to the state's department of Health and Human Services. On Sunday, the daily percent positive test rate was at 5.9%, continuing a downward trajectory over the last 14 days. The state has administered more than 9 million tests in just under a year.

Still the current average is double than what we were seeing for months. From March 2020 to mid-October, the state was averaging between 1,300 and 1,800 new cases everyday.

In the past week alone, more than 20,000 new cases were reported across North Carolina.

North Carolina's neighboring states aren't faring much better. Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina are all reporting more than 8740 cases, cumulative, since Feb. 12.

The US is about to top 500,000 COVID-19 deaths