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Reporting by Will Huntsberry and Jesse Marx
The Covid-19 vaccine has led to dramatic reductions in death. The number of San Diegans who died related to Covid fell from roughly 4,200 in the pandemic’s first year to roughly 2,200 in the second year, after the vaccine became widely available.
In year one, deaths were concentrated in non-White, low-income parts of the county. But now, that is changing.
Voice of San Diego logged and analyzed every Covid-related death certificate over the first two years of the pandemic to begin to understand how the advent of the vaccine, as well as other factors, are leading to changing death rates.
Our findings show that while death rates tended to go down in most places, the way deaths are distributed has changed significantly.
Latinos, for instance, were more than four times as likely to die as Whites during the first year of the pandemic, according to age-adjusted death rates calculated by Voice. That gap fell by half during the pandemic’s second year.
Political affiliation was also a factor. A comparison of death certificates and voter files reveals that Republicans and independents were much more likely to die than Democrats as time went on.
We’re Releasing Our Data on Covid-19 Deaths in San Diego County
Voice of San Diego logged every Covid-19 death certificate during the first two years of the pandemic. That information is now available broken up by year and in one single, online database.
How We Matched Covid Death Certificates to Voter Registration Rolls
It took a lawsuit and a lot of patience, but eventually our reporters managed to match more than 6,000 death certificates to voter registration records.
After the Vaccine, Republicans Became Far More Likely to Die with Covid-19 Than Democrats
A Voice of San Diego analysis of death certificates and public voter files reveals that partisan affiliation was a predictor of one’s likelihood to perish during year two of the pandemic. Those who decline to identify with a party also saw a…
What We Learned This Year: Covid Killed Half As Many People, But Moved Into Different Communities
The vaccine was a big reason for the decline, but by no means the only. A number of factors conspired to ensure the disparities we’d seen in year one of the pandemic shifted dramatically across the region.
VOSD Podcast: What Death Certificates Revealed About Covid Year Two
This week on the podcast, Voice journalists Jesse Marx and Will Huntsberry unleash an authoritative account of Covid: Year Two. Two years ago, we had to sue the county to gain access to county death records that mentioned Covid as a cause.…
Behind VOSD’s Covid Year Two Investigation
Voice of San Diego reporters spent months logging and analyzing death certificates for the second year of the pandemic. Here’s what they found
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These stories are part of an ongoing investigative series.
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The Data
This series is supported by the Data-Driven Reporting Project.
To request access to our data for research or reporting purposes email:
will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org or jesse.marx@voiceofsandiego.org.
Year One: Covid-19’s Death Toll
View the Year One project page.
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