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The daily death toll from America’s coronavirus crisis rose sharply this week amid a dramatic surge in confirmed infections across the South and West that has inundated hospitals with ill patients and forced several states to pause or reverse plans to reopen businesses.
Texas, Arizona and South Carolina have all seen their death tolls rise by more than 100 percent in the past four weeks, according to an analysis of state and county health data by The Washington Post. Four more states — Mississippi, Tennessee, California and Louisiana — have seen at least a 10 percent jump in that time span.
“They’re starting to tick up,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Deaths are a lagging indicator, so we always expected that if they were going to go up, it would take some time.” Continue reading.