HARLINGEN — As the grim reaping of COVID-19 continues across the globe, the death toll from the coronavirus here in the United States shows that per capita Texas ranks No. 28 with 22 deaths per 100,000 population.
A large number of deaths compared to population are clustered in the Northeast.
The highest numbers are in New Jersey, which ranks No. 1, with 178 deaths per 100,000, New York with 168 per 100,000, Massachusetts with 125 per 100,000, Connecticut with 124 per 100,000 and Rhode Island with 95 per 100,000.
Louisiana is next at 84 per 100,000.
The numbers were published Friday by Johns Hopkins University.
In the states with highest per-capita death rates, both New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy ordered nursing homes to accept patients who had tested positive for coronavirus.
Governors of three other states with high per-capita death rates, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, which ranked No. 7 with 65 deaths per 100,000, and Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, which ranked 11th at 56 deaths per 100,000, also ordered positive COVID-19 cases into nursing homes.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the same order, but his state ranks lower, coming in at No. 27 with 23 deaths per 100,000 population, just a spot above Texas.
According to the Texas Department of Health Services, as of Saturday, 6,837 Texas residents had died due to COVID-19 out of 430,485 cases reported.
Over the course of the pandemic, the United States has had the highest number of COVID-linked deaths since the first case was diagnosed on Jan. 21. Since then, 4.6 million U.S. cases have been confirmed along with 154,447 deaths.
Second on that worldwide list is Brazil with 93,563 deaths, and third is Mexico, which has overtaken Great Britain in the last few days for that spot, with 47,472 deaths.
These numbers are published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
But is a plateau within sight?
According to Johns Hopkins and Bloomberg News, the number of new cases reported in the United States on Saturday was 58,908, the lowest one-day total in the past five days.
Deaths increased by 946 on Saturday, which was the first time in five days that grim number came in at under 1,000.
