https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.htmlThe places hit hardest
The coronavirus has moved across the country in distinct phases, devastating one region, then another.
The Northeast experienced the worst this spring, as temporary morgues were deployed in New York City. Over the summer, cases spiked across the Sun Belt, prompting many states to tighten restrictions just weeks after reopening. By fall, the virus was filling rural hospitals in the Midwest and West as it devastated communities that had for months avoided the pandemic’s worst.
More than 1 million cases have been identified in California.
The nation’s most populous places have all suffered tremendously. In Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, more than 5,800 people have died. In Los Angeles County, Calif., more than 330,000 people have had the virus, more than in most states. And in New York City, about one of every 352 residents has died.
But unlike in the early days of the pandemic, it is not so simple to say that big cities have been hit hardest. In the summer, cities along the United States-Mexico border added cases at the highest rates. For much of the fall, small and mid-sized cities in the Upper Midwest and West added cases at the highest rates. Rural areas that had long had few cases have become sudden hotspots.
