Mom, 3 Sons Die of COVID-19 in Louisiana

In a 10-day span, four members of the same Louisiana family were dead from the coronavirus. Antoinette Franklin, 86, of New Orleans, and her sons Herman Franklin Jr., 71; Timothy Franklin, 61; and Anthony Franklin Sr., 58, died between March 20 and 30. All tested positive for COVID-19, the New York Daily News reports, but other family members don't know how they got it. Louisiana has emerged as a coronavirus hot spot and had reported 16,284 confirmed cases and 582 deaths as of Tuesday afternoon, NBC News reports. (Compare that to California's 17,540 cases and 447 deaths; there are nearly 35 million more people in California than Louisiana.)

Also disturbing is the fact that while black people make up about a third of Louisiana's populations, they account for 70.5% of coronavirus deaths in the state; Franklin and her sons were black. Relatives say all four got sick about the same time. "My uncle passed, my grandmother passed, my dad passed, then my other uncle passed," Anthony Franklin told WDSU. "It's literally like seven to eight days apart. It's horrific." (The coronavirus is hitting the black community particularly hard.)