Initially, urban areas were hardest hit by COVID-19; by the fall, less densely populated places more affected Average number of deaths per day attributed to COVID-19 in a single congressional district suburban neighborhoods
Early in the course of the pandemic, the health impacts were felt most severely in dense urban centers. From March to May, congressional districts in the most urbanized parts of the country were experiencing about five times as many deaths on average compared with those in the least dense parts of the country, and in some places this disparity was much larger.
However, by the summertime the urban-rural split had largely disappeared, and over the last several months, those districts with small shares of residents in densely populated places have been experiencing twice as many deaths as those in the parts of the country where all or nearly all residents live in urban neighborhoods.
Initially, urban areas were hardest hit by COVID-19; by  | the fall, less densely populated places more affected  | Average number of deaths per day attributed to COVID-19 in a single  | congressional district  | Mar-May  | Jun-Aug  | Sept-Nov  | All CDs  | 2. 6  | 1.9  | 2. 1  | In congressional districts where  | %  | of residents live in urban or dense  | suburban neighborhoods  | <5  | 1. 1  | 1.8  | 3. 0  | 5-10  | 1.3  | 1.1 5  | 2.5  | 10-40  | 2. 4  | 1.9  | 2.0  | 40-90  | 2.8  | 2 0  | 1.5  | >90  | 1. 5  | 5. 7  | 2.1 1  | Notes: Urban/densely suburban classifications based on CityLab's Congressional Density  | Index.  | Source: Pew Research Center analysis of COVID- 19 Data Repository from the Johns Hopkins  | University Center for Systems Science and Engineering as of Dec. 3, 2020. See  | methodology for details.  | "The Changing Geography of COVID 19 in the U.S.  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 