Covid-19 Deaths and Population Density by State

It is doubtless that the extreme population density of New York City has played a role in New York's status as the state most heavily hit by Covid-19. I compared Covid-19 deaths/1,000,000 population to population density for each state (as well as District of Columbia and Puerto Rico). The data was obtained from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ on April 14, 2020. 

I didn't include District of Columbia in the chart because it's population density makes it too much of an outlier. Other outliers (New York in particular) still make the chart mostly unreadable, so I included the data below. I sorted states by deaths per 1,000,000 population divided by population density, and ranked the states. By some logic this orders the states from best to worst performance after accounting for differences in population density. Of course, many other factors have had an impact. The most immediate thing people might suggest is that Puerto Rico and Hawaii performed well because they are islands, and therefore naturally isolated. This might not explain it completely; Hawaii also has the longest life expectancy of all states, and Puerto Rico is not far behind it. Perhaps the general health of the population is an important factor. It should also be noted, that while Alaska performed worst by a huge margin in this measure, about half of Alaska's population lives in the Anchorage metropolitan area, making its overall population density number more skewed than other states.

Rank	State	Population/Square Mile	Deaths/1,000,000 Population	(Deaths/1,000,000 Population)/(Population/Square Mi)
	District of Columbia	11011	76	0.0069021887
	Puerto Rico	1046	13	0.0124282983
1	Hawaii	222	6	0.027027027
2	North Carolina	206	11	0.0533980583
3	Florida	378	24	0.0634920635
4	West Virginia	76	5	0.0657894737
5	Rhode Island	1021	69	0.0675808031
6	Maryland	618	44	0.071197411
7	California	251	19	0.0756972112
8	Ohio	284	24	0.0845070423
9	Virginia	212	18	0.0849056604
10	Delaware	485	43	0.0886597938
11	Tennessee	160	16	0.1
12	Texas	105	11	0.1047619048
13	South Carolina	162	18	0.1111111111
14	New Hampshire	148	17	0.1148648649
15	Georgia	177	24	0.1355932203
16	Massachusetts	871	124	0.1423650976
17	Pennsylvania	286	46	0.1608391608
18	Utah	36	6	0.1666666667
19	Arkansas	57	10	0.1754385965
20	Minnesota	68	13	0.1911764706
21	Kentucky	112	23	0.2053571429
22	Alabama	95	21	0.2210526316
23	New Jersey	1218	275	0.2257799672
24	Connecticut	741	168	0.2267206478
25	Missouri	88	20	0.2272727273
26	Iowa	55	14	0.2545454545
27	Wisconsin	106	27	0.2547169811
28	Illinois	231	62	0.2683982684
29	Indiana	184	53	0.2880434783
30	Arizona	60	18	0.3
31	Oregon	41	13	0.3170731707
32	Maine	43	14	0.3255813953
33	Wyoming	6	2	0.3333333333
34	Nebraska	24	9	0.375
35	Oklahoma	57	25	0.4385964912
36	Mississippi	63	33	0.5238095238
37	Kansas	36	21	0.5833333333
38	South Dakota	11	7	0.6363636364
39	Vermont	67	45	0.671641791
40	Washington	107	72	0.6728971963
41	New Mexico	17	15	0.8823529412
42	Michigan	175	161	0.92
43	Montana	7	7	1
44	Idaho	20	20	1
45	Colorado	52	55	1.0576923077
46	North Dakota	10	11	1.1
47	New York	420	513	1.2214285714
48	Nevada	26	41	1.5769230769
49	Louisiana	108	190	1.7592592593
50	Alaska	1	11	11