In Middlesex, Massachusetts’s most populous county and home to Cambridge, Somerville and Lowell, officials reported 317 at-home deaths in March. That’s about a 20% increase from the same time period for the past three years, in which deaths ranged from 249 to 265. In late February, a Cambridge-based biotech firm hosted a conference in nearby Boston that was later reportedly linked to more than 100 infections; it’s unclear if anyone died.

Older people are particularly vulnerable to dying from COVID-19. In all of Massachusetts, deaths for people 65 and older increased by 3.6% in March from the same month, on average, during the previous three years. The comparison to 2019 was particularly dramatic, an additional 250 deaths across Massachusetts. At the same time, the data shows that increase can’t be accounted for by the official coronavirus tally alone: only 89 deaths statewide were attributed to the virus in March, according to state Health Department data…

In Detroit, authorities responded to more than 150 “dead person observed” calls in the first 10 days of April. It was around 40 during the same period for the past three years, according to city 911 call data. Almost all of the incidents in this year’s period occurred in areas where the median household income was less than $45,000, census data shows. Lower-income areas have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus.