largest tribe in the state. and today marks the first stop of the new sunday series, velshi across america. every sunday, i came to you live from a vital battleground state from across the country. i learned much more from being out in the field talking to people and so we re doing it again but for different reasons. the election is over. joe biden is president-elect and now we have to turn our attention away from the circus that will soon leave the nation s capital to the most pressing health emergency in modern history, the covid-19 pandemic. more than 13.3 million americans have been diagnosed with the disease and nearly 267,000 of them have died. more than 2,000 americans are now consistently dying every day from covid-19. while there s promising news about vaccines, while an end to this national nightmare is in sight, we re still many months away from it being safe to return to something that resembles normal. and while we can all look ahead to the seriousness with whi
get us into even more trouble. the washington post reporting, quote, as daily covid-19 deaths climb to levels not seen since early in the pandemic, nine states have hit one more grim marker. more than one in every 1,000 people dead of coronavirus-related causes. on friday south dakota became the latest state to reach that unwanted marker, including new york, new jersey, and neighboring north dakota which currently has the highest covid mortality rate in the world. it s early morning here outside the badlands region of south dakota. we re traveling to key locations across the country, areas that have been hard hit by the coronavirus, even before the arrival of covid-19 native americans had the country s lowest life expectancy. now south dakota is reporting some of the highest deaths per capita. residents are fighting for their very lives. with a positivity rate of 24%, south dakota and neighboring north dakota have the highest incidence of covid-19 cases nationwide over the