Mary Duenwald, Columnist

Rural America Isn’t Safe from Covid-19

Rural states may have fewer resources to fight the virus.

March 26, 2020 at 2:15 PM UTC

Mary Duenwald was an editor at Bloomberg Opinion and a member of the editorial board covering health care and the environment.

Even rural states can’t keep coronavirus out.
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Looking at a map of Covid-19 cases nationwide, it’s hard not to long for home.

I’m in New York, a state with 31,000 cases of the infection; but South Dakota, where I grew up, has 41, one of the very smallest counts of any state in the U.S. — spread out over 77,000 square miles. Yes, South Dakota has fewer people, but that’s still only one in 21,500 people infected. In New York, the ratio is one in 634.