The last four weeks have yielded the highest number of new deaths since the start of the pandemic for all groups except Black and Pacific Islander Americans, for whom it was the second most deadly stretch. (Black Americans suffered the greatest losses in the month of April 2020—especially in cities where the pandemic first raged—while Pacific Islanders saw their highest death toll in our Feb. 2 update.)
Note that March 3 ends the third deadliest four-week period since the beginning of the pandemic according to
data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project. (The first and second deadliest periods were in January and December, respectively.) Thus, it is likely that some of the apparent increase in deaths reflected below come from reclassification of deaths by race and ethnicity. In fact, over the last four weeks the number of deaths with an unknown race or ethnicity has decreased by more than 13,000.