Rural communities struggle with virus
At Dr. Karen Kinsell's southwest Georgia practice, patients showing coronavirus symptoms have infiltrated an appointment schedule usually crowded with bladder infections and sinus trouble.
An outbreak following a March funeral service in Albany, Georgia, two counties away, brought COVID-19 to Kinsell's community of about 3,000, situated a stone's throw from Alabama.
Far from the West Coast and Northeast metropolises at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, Clay County has seen the number of local COVID-19 infections climb. The community has 28 cases, three virus-induced deaths, one ambulance and — like 20% of counties nationwide with at least one coronavirus case — no local hospital.
Rural communities like this, experts say, may be on the brink of disaster.
A USA TODAY analysis found that new cases have been confirmed at faster rates in rural and nonmetropolitan counties since mid-March, which is when growth began to slow in hard-hit cities but sped up everywhere else.
A similar trend can be seen in death counts: The tally of deaths rose fastest outside America's major cities. And
now, as the daily tally of new coronavirus cases starts to shrink in cities, it continues to grow in rural areas. For the week ending May 9, metropolitan counties announced 10% fewer new cases than the previous week. By comparison, rural counties announced 8% more cases than the previous week.
For residents in those communities, including those in the highest risk
categories for COVID-19 — poor, elderly and suffering from underlying health conditions — a spate of recent hospital closures means the nearest emergency room is sometimes hours away and plagued by staff shortages and financial deficits.
At least 130 rural hospitals have closed nationally in the past decade, according to the University of North Carolina Sheps Center for Health
Services Research.
The majority were in states where lawmakers didn't expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving already struggling hospitals the burden of millions in uncompensated costs from uninsured patients. In Texas alone, more than 20 rural hospitals closed. Tennessee lost 13. Nine closed in Oklahoma and seven in Georgia.