COVID-19 death rates disproportionately higher in Indigenous communities share Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are dying at almost twice the rate of white Americans, according to detailed analysis by APM Research Lab—an independent research and data assessment organization. According to APM’s recently published study, one in every 475 Native Americans has died from COVID since the start of the pandemic, compared with one in every 825 white Americans and one in every 645 Black Americans, nationwide. The true death toll may be significantly higher as multiple states and cities provide patchy or no data on Native Americans deaths to COVID-19. Of those that do, communities in Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas have been the hardest hit.