Virus is coming for rural America

The course of the Covid-19 pandemic in rural Mower County, Minnesota, is hand-written across six easel-sized sheets of paper affixed to the wall of the local Emergency Operations Center. Six cases and no deaths were recorded on March 22, the first entry. Pam Kellogg, Mower County’s community health division manager, points to the fourth sheet, covering much of May. “It was the third week when things really hit us.” On May 31, Mower reported 64 new cases, for a total of 318 out of a population of about 40,000. By mid-June, it had the second-highest case incidence in Minnesota, and by the end of the month it had nearly 1,000 infections.
Mower’s experience is increasingly common. Of the 10 US counties with the highest number of recent Covid-19 cases per resident, nine are nonmetropolitan areas with populations under 50,000. There are several factors behind that surge, including the prevalence of older populations, meat-processing plants and communal living among immigrant labour forces.
But what it adds up to is a quietly growing crisis. For many of these rural communities, confronting the coronavirus pandemic will require a lot more than issuing stay-at-home orders — and there won’t be much help from Washington or anywhere else.
Austin, the Mower County seat, is located 100 miles south of the Twin Cities. Like many small towns, its economy revolves around agriculture, the local hospital and the government. The biggest employer, Hormel Foods Co, maker of products like SPAM and Skippy Peanut Butter, is headquartered across the highway from a Mayo Clinic facility.
Collaborative efforts between Hormel and Mayo were common even before the pandemic. But in mid-March, when Austin reported its first cases, their partnership turned out to be essential as it became clear that government support and reliable information were in short supply.
Mayo provided guidance on protective measures in Hormel’s workplace, for instance, and even found the company a batch of no-touch thermometers. With the food industry becoming a hub for rural Covid outbreaks nationwide, that help proved critical.

—Bloomberg