South Dakota records highest Covid hospitalisation rate – as 8,000 die in US of virus last week

In the US, more than 8,000 Americans were recorded as having died of Covid last week and there are now more people in US hospitals suffering from the disease than there were in the peak of the pandemic in the spring.

The rate of cases is increasing fastest in the Upper Midwest, and among those states is South Dakota, which has had more than 800 Covid deaths and half of those were in this month alone.