Five out of 20 counties in the nation with the most deaths per capita from covid-19 are in southwest Georgia. @WaPoVanessa and @ReisThebault dive into the disparity https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/26/coronavirus-southwest-georgia/

That cluster in southwest Georgia caught our eye and when we were reporting our last story on how coronavirus was infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate. So @WaPoVanessa pushed us to zero in on it https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/07/coronavirus-is-infecting-killing-black-americans-an-alarmingly-high-rate-post-analysis-shows/

Georgia doesn’t release race data at the county level but they publish a pdf with the rate of coronavirus cases at the Census block group level. @KarklisCarto spent countless hours extracting and geocoding that data.

With this level of detail, we could see there are signs the virus’s spread is picking up pace in white communities, too, though the mostly black neighborhoods are still seeing the highest number of cases per capita

But what made southwest Georgia so susceptible? They’ve struggled for years with a severe lack of access to health care. Some counties have no doctors, no hospitals and a high percentage of uninsured residents. The facilities and physicians already were stretched thin.

Across the United States, urban counties have higher rates of coronavirus cases and deaths than rural counties. In Georgia, it’s the opposite. The state’s rural areas have a death rate 1.5 times that of its large cities.

"When Gov. Brian Kemp (R) announced he was lifting restrictions on businesses, some residents in this region felt cast off, like the state was telling them to fend for themselves once again."

Georgia’s Dept of Public Health is doing a commendable job of putting out data that other states simply aren’t. Like, they’re listing details on those who died such as age, gender, and whether or not they had underlying conditions by county. (Now release race details, please)