The geography of reported COVID-19 deaths significantly shifted between the pandemic’s arrival in the U.S. and early December, according to a Pew Research Center analysis published Tuesday.
During the early stages of the pandemic, far greater numbers of COVID-19 deaths were reported in heavily populated areas, places that were more likely to be controlled by Democrats. That trend began to shift in the summer as the virus spread into the southern and midwestern states.
By the fall, rural areas reported spikes in COVID-19 deaths similar to those seen in urban areas during the spring. As case and death counts continued rising throughout the country in early December, Pew Research Center Associate Brad Jones told Newsweek the geographic shift of the pandemic’s impact was “amazing and heartbreaking.”
Pew researchers used Montana as an example of one rural state that began experiencing a pandemic surge in the fall. “In the first six months there was less than one Montanan who died every day of the coronavirus, and in the past two months that’s increased 10 times,” Jones said. “It really is amazing and heartbreaking to see how dramatically this has changed and how quickly it has changed.”
Pew’s analysis, which used data from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Center for Systems Science and Engineering, included graphics that showed the shift in reported COVID-19 deaths between heavily populated urban areas in the spring and less densely populated rural areas in the summer and fall. In recent months, congressional districts “with small shares of residents in densely populated places are experiencing twice as many deaths as those in the parts of the country where all or nearly all residents live in urban neighborhoods,” Pew said in a news release.
According to a new Pew Research Center analysis, the number of daily COVID-19 deaths reported in Montana rose nearly tenfold in recent months compared with those reported in the state at the start of the pandemic. In the photo above, the Park County Health Department performs COVID-19 test using the Abbot BinaxNOW rapid test at the Fairgrounds on December 7, 2020 in Livingston, Montana. William Campbell/Getty
Jones said the geographic shift was stark after an earlier Pew analysis highlighted the concentration of COVID-19 deaths in places like New York City, Detroit, Boston and New Orleans. Conducting this second analysis provided Pew researchers an opportunity to “zoom out” and assess the impact of the pandemic on a wider scale, he said.
“The most interesting thing was this absolute reversal,” Jones told Newsweek. “We have a graphic where we look at the average number of deaths during different three-month periods in urban and rural places. In the beginning, deaths in urban places were five or six times as high as rural places, whereas now rural areas are experiencing about twice as many deaths as urban areas. It’s really a dramatic shift in where these deaths are located.”
The regional shift of the pandemic’s impact has implied political significance. While urban areas, which are more likely to be controlled by Democrats, experienced early COVID-19 surges, many rural areas, which are more likely to be controlled by Republicans, experienced their surges months later.
“As we move on through the summer and now into the fall and winter, we’ve seen that it has moved into other parts of the county where now Republicans are more likely to represent places that are hit harder than Democrats,” Jones said.
According to Pew’s data, COVID-19 deaths are now on the rise in both Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning congressional districts. By December 9, more than 15.3 million cases were reported throughout the U.S. since the start of the pandemic and more than 288,000 people died after contracting the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University’s data tracker.
“While the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the average Democratic controlled district remains higher than in the average Republican controlled district, the gap has narrowed in recent months,” Pew’s press release said.
Though Pew’s analysis did not assess Americans’ reactions to lockdowns or other virus-inspired restrictions, Jones said the data appeared to match some of the partisan trends throughout the pandemic. “All these facts that are associated with partisanship also happen to be associated with the course of the pandemic,” he told Newsweek.
Newsweek reached out to the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee for comment but did not receive responses in time for publication.
