For decades,­ people in the 11 states that seceded during the Civil War -- America’s poorest region -- have suffered from a scourge of obesity and hypertension, which intensify the danger of the coronavirus and the Covid-19 respiratory disease that it causes. Four of the five states with the highest diabetes rates are in the South. And eight didn’t expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving thousands of families without access to routine care, even as financially troubled rural hospitals wither away. ... Now Covid-19 has infected 47 long-term care centers in Georgia, overwhelmed hospitals in New Orleans, spread into at least six Alabama nursing homes, forced the evacuation of scores of elderly residents from a Tennessee rehabilitation center

The coronavirus crisis will determine whether Trump is a one-term president, but it may reshape the social order far more, by Thos. B. Edsall

The continuously escalating COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a need for President Trump to be truthful and to drop his compulsion to spread misinformation. Unfortunately, any effort to hold the president accountable is met with insults and derision. Journalist Yamiche Alcindor has recently taken the brunt of the president’s attacks and now both the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) have come to her defense.

Video edited by Anshul Verma, March 30

Streets around the Indian capital Delhi have been filled with people walking to reach their villages in neighbouring states. Most of them are daily-wage workers who are now out of work after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a complete lockdown of the country on 24 March to halt the spread of coronavirus. In the absence of money and jobs, they are desperate to reach their villages. Some found government-run buses to reach home and others just continued to walk.

The BBC's Vikas Pandey finds out more.