Recent Covid-19 death rates found to be 'six times higher' in heavily-Republican counties: report

People who live in counties that voted heavily for then-President Donald Trump are more likely to die of Covid-19 than people who live in counties that voted heavily for President Joe Biden, according to a new report.

A review of Covid-19 data by NPR found that people "living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden." Data examined by NPR included information collected since May in around 3,000 counties. Previous reports have found similar results.

Health care analyst Charles Gaba told NPR that in October death rates were six times higher in the most heavily Republican counties when compared to the most heavily Democratic counties.

"An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat," Kaiser Family Foundation's Liz Hamel said. "If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

NPR attributed the increased death rates to misinformation after Kaiser Family Foundation polling found that 94% of Republicans believe that one or more false statements about Covid-19 could be true. The same poll showed that only 14% of Democrats believe false statements about the disease.

Read the entire report here.