Covid-19’s Blow Is Falling Harder Than Ever on Rural America

(Bloomberg) -- The Covid-19 pandemic is slamming rural America harder than ever before, with record daily cases reported in Montana and South Dakota, putting the focus on small towns with typically limited hospital resources.

On a per-capita basis, the most rural counties have never had it so bad relative to the most urban, government data show.

Based on a rolling seven-day average, there are about 19.5 daily cases per 100,000 residents in America’s most rural counties -- those outside Census-defined metropolitan areas where the biggest towns have fewer than 10,000 people.

In addition to the strain on small-town hospitals, the virus could affect voters in a part of America that was key to President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, even as he battles with the virus himself.

The U.S. has had 7.3 million cases of Covid-10, and almost 208,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Elsewhere in the U.S.:

• New York state reported the highest daily case count since May on Thursday, including pockets of concern in Brooklyn and Queens.
• Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed an executive order Thursday that makes it easier for out-of-state health-care workers to assist with the pandemic in the Badger State, where per-capita new cases are now among the highest in the country.
• A group of Michigan anti-shutdown activists are submitting hundreds of thousands of signatures Friday in a process that seeks to repeal Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s unilateral authority to issue pandemic orders.
• Puerto Rico extended virus-related restrictions for two weeks as officials cited concerns about the accuracy of testing data.

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