COVID-19: The unfolding public health crisis in the South

May 14, 2020 - Hospitals in many rural Southern counties with COVID-19 outbreaks were financially vulnerable even before the crisis. What happens next?

May 7, 2020 - State and federal lawmakers are erecting temporary barriers for workers and consumers sickened by the novel coronavirus to bring lawsuits against companies they hold responsible. For example, a new North Carolina law bars pandemic-related lawsuits against "essential businesses" — even if they're negligent.

May 7, 2020 - Already dealing with longstanding barriers to the ballot, voter organizations will be turning out the youth vote this year amid an unprecedented public health crisis — and they are transitioning to a virtual format for their mobilization efforts.

May 6, 2020 - Across the country, COVID-19 is impacting black people disproportionately. Many worry the disease could wreak havoc in the South, home to most black Americans, as several Southern states start reopening.

May 6, 2020 - Previous COVID-19 federal relief bills left out the essential workers most at risk in the pandemic. Those workers are fighting to make sure that doesn’t happen again. 

April 24, 2020 - A decade after the BP oil spill set off an environmental health disaster in communities across the Gulf Coast, the company and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry continue to inflict pain on vulnerable populations across the South — and they're now implicated in raising the death rate from the novel coronavirus in African-American communities across Louisiana.

April 21, 2020 - There's a growing push for voting by mail amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but Republicans are fighting it — the latest move in the party's decades-long campaign to limit voting.

April 20, 2020 - With the COVID-19 pandemic raging through correctional facilities, many states have ordered the release of nonviolent offenders in local jails or prison inmates at greater risk from the virus. But states in the Deep South have been slow to act. Meanwhile, Louisiana is moving its COVID-19-stricken prisoners to the notorious Angola penitentiary — an hour's drive from a hospital with a ventilator.

April 20, 2020 - The migrant and seasonal farmworkers who help feed the U.S. are considered "essential" employees amid the coronavirus pandemic and must show up to work to earn enough money to survive. As schools move online and government child development programs close temporarily, they're left scrambling to figure out what to do with their children.

April 17, 2020 - Severe weather devastated communities across the South over Easter weekend. Now they're trying to figure out how to recover from a natural disaster in the middle of a pandemic — and how to prepare for future storms.

April 10, 2020 - The Southeast Crescent Regional Commission was created in 2008 to provide economic development assistance to Black Belt states but has never received its full appropriation from Congress — even while its counterpart covering whiter, richer Northern states has. With Black Belt communities being ravaged by the pandemic, it's past time for action.

April 9, 2020 - The decennial U.S. population count is underway and will be used for everything from drawing new congressional districts to deciding where to allocate federal resources — including any potential coronavirus vaccine. But the pandemic is complicating the process and raising concerns about potential undercounts, which would inflict more pain on suffering communities.

April 8, 2020 - Calls have grown louder for states to allow more voting by mail as the coronavirus pandemic spreads. North Carolina recently made it harder to request an absentee ballot in response to fraud in a congressional race, but a group that works with black voters wants a court to strike down the changes as discriminatory.  

April 7, 2020 - Southern states are among those with the nation's highest rates of homelessness. Some places in the region are taking targeted action to protect the unhoused, who are particularly vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

April 2, 2020 - Many states and local communities in the South have ordered restaurants to move to takeout-only to help stop the spread of the new coronavirus, and business is down even in places where they're still open. That means tough times for low-wage food servers, especially given the stingy unemployment benefits offered in some states.

March 27, 2020 - With daily life disrupted by the novel coronavirus outbreak, voting rights advocates are calling for action to ensure that the 2020 elections are free, fair, accessible, and secure. Here are the steps they say we need to take to protect both public health and democracy.

March 27, 2020 - As the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic begins making its way into crowded U.S. jails, prisons, and detention centers, prison reform advocates are calling on officials to take action to protect the vulnerable. 

March 27, 2020 - With the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic forcing Americans to work and study from home, access to high-speed internet is critical — but in the South far fewer people have access than providers report, and many states have erected barriers to community networks.

March 19, 2020 - The global coronavirus pandemic lays bare the existing problems in health care systems that were already stretched to the breaking point.

March 13, 2020 - A skilled nursing facility that's part of the Tennessee-based Life Care Centers of America chain, which is owned by billionaire GOP donor Forrest Preston, is at the center of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in the Seattle area. Stories have emerged of gross mismanagement of the outbreak at the facility, whose corporate owner has also recently been in trouble for Medicare fraud and worker discrimination.