Politico’s Dan Goldberg and Alice Miranda Ollstein highlight the dire situation unfolding in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., which currently has the highest per capita coronavirus mortality rate in the nation.

Frantic local officials instituted an overnight curfew just this week and are begging residents to stay home. But in largely rural Southern states like Louisiana — where social distancing has been spotty, widespread testing is unavailable and hospitals are poorer and farther apart — the response may be coming too late to avoid a public health crisis as bad as the one now engulfing New York.

There are no hospitals in St. John’s Parish. None. Many neighboring parishes have no ICU beds. With 322 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection and 22 deaths as of this writing, the Parish and its surrounding regions have already filled nearly three-quarters of available ICU beds. But this region is not alone, nor is it unique. As Politico notes, “[T]he states that many experts are most concerned with are the ones that have been slow to clamp down on travel and nonessential businesses.”

Those are, disproportionately, the states in the South.