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– It took less than a year for COVID-19 to spread to each of the more than 3,000 US provinces. The last province to register an infection was Kalawao Province in Hawaii, the country’s smallest and least populated province, where quarantine was a way of life for more than a century, the Wall Street Journal reports. The province is located on the Kaluapapa peninsula on the island of Moloka’i. Steep cliffs cut it off from the rest of the island and the only access to land is via a mule track. People with leprosy, now known as Hansen’s disease, were exiled there from 1866 to 1969, and the approximately 70 current residents include a dozen patients with Hansen’s disease, with an average age of 86 years. Washington Post.
Hawaii health officials say the county’s first coronavirus case was reported in December, weeks after a case was finally reported in Loving County, Texas, population 169. A resident who tested negative in Honolulu tested positive after flying back to the province. Officials say the virus has not spread in the community because the person and others on the run were quarantined after arrival. “To me that person was a hero because they were honest, and they reported it, and they followed quarantine rules when they returned from outside the settlement,” said Glenn Wasserman, head of the communicable disease and public health department at Hawaii. Department of Health, the log. (Read more COVID-19 stories.)