'Trump country' now leads in COVID-19 cases, deaths

What was once proclaimed to be a "blue state" problem by President Donald Trump, the wave of coronavirus cases in America is now crashing squarely into states that supported him in 2016.

A Reuters tally shows cases of the novel coronavirus doubled in the state of Wisconsin last week. They're rising in Florida, Texas, Ohio, and the Dakotas.

Back in the spring, the densely-populated cities of the Northeast and West Coast were hit hardest, and responded with strident lockdown measures.

Other states followed, but by Memorial Day, many Midwestern and Southern states lifted restrictions and so no immediate uptick in virus cases.

The Republican president even chided that the coronavirus was a Democratic, 'blue state' problem - and urged those areas to restore economic activity.

"If you take the blue states out we are at a level that I don't think any of more than the world would be at. We are at a very low level. But some of the states they were blue states. Blue state management. By the way we recommend they open up their states."

Several Republican-led states followed the president in bucking mitigation measures.

But by midsummer outbreaks spread in the South before moving this fall into in the upper Midwest.

And now, it is squarely a "Trump country" issue.

Trump argues that case numbers are inflated by the growth of testing. But these so-called Trump states also have closed the gap when it comes to deaths.

By October these states eclipsed the rest of the country in total COVID-19 deaths, and the number of fatalities continues to grow faster in those areas with a week to go before Election Day.