Coronavirus has now infiltrated every county in the United States, including the smallest – a remote Hawaiian island with less than 100 residents that housed a leper colony.
Kalawao County, which is so remote that it receives supplies by barge once a year, registered its first case of COVID-19 in December, almost a year after the deadly bug appeared in the US in Snohomish County, near Seattle, reported the Wall Street Journal.
The tiny enclave on Molokai Island was established in 1865 for patients with leprosy – now known as Hansen’s disease – who will be exiled there for life, according to the newspaper, which analyzed data from Johns Hopkins and individual states for its report.
Hawaiian health officials have taken steps to seal the settlement after seeing the disease pass through U.S. nursing homes early last year – and authorities have banned visits to the county to protect Hansen’s five remaining patients. whose average age is 86, according to the Journal.
Some of the five have serious health conditions that put them at increased risk for severe complications or death from coronavirus, Hawaiian health official Glenn Wasserman told reporters.
But the isolated county eventually filed its first case after a resident returned from a trip to Honolulu after receiving a COVID-19 test. The asymptomatic person tested positive, the Journal reported.
The virus did not spread, however, because the person and the three close contacts on the same flight immediately went into quarantine.
“For me, that person was a hero, because she was honest and reported and followed the quarantine rules when they returned from the settlement,” Wasserman told the newspaper.