The last county free of COVID-19 on the US mainland now has cases. It’s in Texas
It was only a matter of time.
Loving County, Texas, had the distinction of being the last in the continental U.S. without a confirmed case of the coronavirus. Now the desolate and sparsely populated West Texas county is no longer alone — another sign the relentless pandemic is reaching every corner of the country as the death toll nears 250,000 Americans.
On Tuesday, Loving County reported not just one, but three cases of COVID-19, according Texas officials. The 669-square-mile county has a population of 169.
County Judge Skeet Lee Jones told Texas Monthly in October he was concerned even before the virus had infected any residents.
“Personally, I’m not scared,” Jones told Texas Monthly. “But wearing the judge’s hat, I am extremely concerned, especially for the elderly and the ones that have preexisting conditions.”
It’s not as if the county was totally insulated from COVID-19 before this week.
Jones’ son returned home to quarantine after testing positive in Dallas, and out-of-town workers at the oil field “man camp” have contracted the virus, Texas Monthly reported. But those cases didn’t count toward the county’s total.
And the drop in oil prices during the pandemic has reduced the workforce in the county, The New York Times reported.
“With the pandemic, a lot of stuff shut down,” Ricardo Galan, a 38-year-old supply company employee, told The New York Times.
Rural areas similar to Loving County lasted the longest without a positive case, but now a surge in cases is hitting those less populated areas, too.
On Friday, Esmeralda County, Nevada, the second-to-last without a case, reported a poll worker tested positive, according to the Reno Gazette Journal. The county on the California border near Fresno has a population of 873.
In late October, Skagway, Alaska, diagnosed its first case as ABC News reported it was among the last four counties in the U.S. free of COVID-19. There were five cases in total before the community implemented widespread testing and a shelter-in-place order, ABC News reported.
“You can market yourself as the community that’s COVID-free, but you also have to be realistic,” Mayor Andrew Cremata told ABC News. “I’d rather be the community that deftly handled the outbreak when it arose.”
Now just one county remains without a case, but it’s not a typical one.
Kalawao County, Hawaii, the last in the U.S. without a case, is governed by the state department of health to care for patients with Hansen’s disease, previously called leprosy. When the disease reached the islands in the 1860s, those infected were isolated on the remote Kalaupapa Peninsula on the island of Molokai.
“There were over 8,000 people that were sent there,” Baron Chan, branch chief for Hansen’s disease at the Hawaii Department of Health, told KHON. “Many were forced to live there. A lot of them were taken away from their families.”
Though only a few patients remain, the department of health has continued to care for them through the pandemic.
“Everyone is pretty dedicated to Kalaupapa, and the patients specifically,” Chan told KHON. “They care for our patients, they’re dear to our hearts. When you talk about social distancing, wearing a mask…they all do it for the patients.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 12:33 PM with the headline "The last county free of COVID-19 on the US mainland now has cases. It’s in Texas."