Welcome to The Data Point, a series from the NBC News Data Graphics team that explains a slice of the latest news through charts and visuals.
More than 900,000 people have died in the United States from Covid-19 as of Friday, according to NBC News’ tally, and data shows that states with low vaccination rates have had the biggest share of deaths over the past six weeks.
The country has recorded 100,000 deaths since Dec. 13. During that period, Tennessee, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania have the largest number of deaths when adjusted for population. Of those states, Pennsylvania is the only one to have fully vaccinated more than 60 percent of its population. "Fully vaccinated" means that at least two weeks have passed since a person has received the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine.
While average new daily cases have decreased by more than 50 percent in the last two weeks, deaths in the U.S. have accelerated. Through Thursday, the country is averaging 2,659 new deaths per day, an increase of 33 percent compared to two weeks ago.
More than 60,000 deaths were reported in January alone, almost double the number recorded in November, before the highly contagious omicron variant began spreading across the country.
