Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused devastating public health, economic, political, and societal crises. We performed a comparison study of COVID-19 outbreaks in states with Republican governors versus states with Democratic governors in the United States between April 2020 and February 2021. This research study shows that 1) states with Democratic governors had tested more people for COVID-19 and have higher testing rates than those with Republican governors; 2) states with Democratic governors had more confirmed cases for COVID-19 from April 12 until the end of July 2020, as well as from early December 2020 to February 22 2021, and had higher test positivity rates from April 12 until late June 2020, and the states with Republican governors had more confirmed cases from August to early December 2020 and had higher test positivity rates since late June 2020; 3) states with Democratic governors had more deaths for COVID-19 and higher mortality rates than those with Republican governors; 4) more people recovered in states with Democratic governors until early July 2020, while the recovery rate of states with Republican governors is similar to that of states with Democratic governors in May 2020 and higher than that of states with Democratic governors in April 2020 and between June 2020 to February 22 2021. We conclude that our data suggest that states with Republican governors controlled COVID-19 better as they had lower mortality rates and similar or higher recovery rates. States with Democratic governors first had higher test positivity rates until late June 2020 but had lower test positivity rates after July 2020. As of February 2021, the pandemic was still spreading as the daily numbers of confirmed cases and deaths were still high, although the test positivity and mortality rates started to stabilize in spring 2021. This study provides a direct description for the status and performance of handling COVID-19 in the states with Republican governors versus states with Democratic governors, and provides insights for future research, policy making, resource distribution, and administration.
Highlights
An outbreak of pneumonia initially took place in Wuhan, China, which turned out to be the dangerous infectious coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) caused by a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
From April 12 to early July 2020, states with Democratic governors had more people recovered, while states with Republican governors had more people recovered from July 2020 to February 22, 2021 (Fig. 1d)
The higher test positivity and mortality rates in states with Democratic governors may be due to a sudden explosion of the pandemic, which broke down the healthcare system, as well as everyone’s inexperience at the beginning
Summary
An outbreak of pneumonia initially took place in Wuhan, China, which turned out to be the dangerous infectious coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) caused by a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In a period of about 10 months from April 12, 2020 to February 22, 2021, huge amounts of data were available for researchers to investigate the performance of the federal and state governments and healthcare systems in handling the pandemic. It is interesting to compare the performance of the states with Republican governors versus those with Democratic governors in handling the pandemic. We performed a comparison study of COVID-19 outbreaks in states with Republican governors versus those with Democratic governors. Based on the data from April 12 2020 to February 22 2021, we compared the trajectories of total and daily numbers of people tested, confirmed cases, deaths, and people recovered from COVID-19 in states with Republican governors versus those with Democratic governors.
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