States with Democratic governors had the highest incidence and death rates from COVID-19 in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, but states with Republican governors surpassed those rates as the crisis dragged on, a study released Tuesday found.
"From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower COVID-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence," the study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina showed.
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"For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December," the study found.
The researchers theorized that one reason for the change is that Democrats were in charge of states where people who had the virus first arrived in the country — but Republicans were less stringent about safeguards, which could have contributed to their states' ultimately higher incidence and death rates.
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