While the state health department publishes new deaths each day, those reports are not necessarily from the previous day. This chart uses day-of-death data, reported by the health department after COVID-19 death investigations, to show the date that each death happened, both in long-term care settings and the general population.

Though long-term care residents never drove overall new case growth, they did comprise most COVID deaths in the state until July, when they accounted for just one-third of all deaths. As of mid-August, long-term care residents account for 43% of all deaths. Late-May, the state completed universal long-term care facility testing of every resident and staff, accounting for nearly 27,000 tests, which correlated with reduced long-term care cases across the state over the following months.

Learn more about long-term care cases here.

View all of our COVID-19 interactive charts here.

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Erica Hensley, a native of Atlanta, has been working as an investigative reporter focusing on public health for Mississippi Today since May 2018. She is a Knight Foundation fellow for our newsroom’s collaboration with local TV station WLBT and curates The Inform[H]er, our monthly women and girls’ newsletter. She is the 2019 recipient of the Doris O'Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship. Erica received a bachelor’s in print journalism and political science from the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a master’s in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia Grady College for Journalism and Mass Communication.