Pandemic Planning in the United States: An Examination of COVID-19 Data

In the early months of 2020, news spread that a coronavirus (COVID-19) had been detected in Wuhan, China. The virus quickly spread across the country and to other continents. As deaths mounted in the United States, evidence indicated that some states experienced a higher rate of COVID-19 deaths than other states and that African American communities were hit harder by the virus than other racial groups. Hence, we pose two questions in this research: Are COVID-19 deaths spread equally across different states and regions of the United States? Secondly, are African Americans more likely to die from COVID-19 than other racial groups? Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and APM Research Lab, we show that some states witnessed significant loss of life due to the virus and that African Americans were more likely to die from the virus when compared with White residents.