States with Republican governors had highest Covid incidence and death rates, study finds [View all]

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States with Republican governors had highest Covid incidence and death rates, study finds
The study found that states with Democratic governors had higher death rates early on in the pandemic, but that trend was reversed by the Fourth of July.

March 11, 2021, 2:10 PM CST


States with Democratic governors had the highest incidence and death rates from Covid-19 in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, but states with Republican governors surpassed those rates as the crisis dragged on, a study released Tuesday found.

"From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower Covid-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence," the study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina showed.

"For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December," the study found.


The researchers theorized that one reason for the change is that Democrats were in charge of states where people who had the virus first arrived in the country — but Republicans were less stringent about safeguards, which could have contributed to their states' ultimately higher incidence and death rates.

"The early trends could be explained by high Covid-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020," the researchers wrote. "However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus."
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But "policy differences" between the Republican and Democratic leaders emerged as a big factor for the reversal of the states' fortunes, the study suggests..........................




Caskets hold the bodies of people who died of Covid-19 sit inside the Gerard J. Neufeld funeral home in Queens, N.Y., on April 29, 2020.Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images file