On assignment for TIME, Christopher Morris photographed Michael Fowler, a coroner in Dougherty County, Ga., the county that currently has the most coronavirus-related deaths in the state. “We’re located about two and a half hours south of Atlanta, and my office used to average one death a day. But now, I’ve had to bring in another part-time person just to keep on top of our cases. The pandemic has turned the city upside down,” writes Fowler, 62. “More than 50 people have died. A majority of the dead are female, and a majority of the dead are African-American. The virus started spreading at a couple of funerals. Those individuals who attended the funerals went back into their neighborhoods, homes, and churches, and more people were infected. It hit like a bomb.”
