A year ago, health authorities announced the first confirmed US Covid-19 case in Snohomish County, Washington, near Seattle. Less than 11 months later, the virus reached an isolated Hawaiian enclave established more than a century ago for patients with leprosy, now called Hansen’s disease.
It appears to be the last county in the US to file a coronavirus case, according to a Wall Street Journal review of state records and data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
Since the first reported case, Covid-19 has raced across the US, infecting at least 24 million Americans, and killing more than 400,000. The virus spread from large cities to sparsely populated rural counties before eventually reaching even the most remote areas working diligently to keep the virus at bay.
To identify the last of more than 3,000 counties affected by the virus, The Journal reviewed data from Johns Hopkins and individual states to verify that Covid-19 reached every county in the 48 contiguous states and Hawaii. Alaska has no formal counties, but the coronavirus data dashboard shows cases across all of the boroughs and state census records that the state reports.
Over the year, the list of the worst affected countries has generally shifted from densely populated to small before the current winter rise.