A year ago, health authorities announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the US in Snohomish County, Washington, near Seattle. Less than 11 months later, the virus arrived in an isolated Hawaiian enclave established more than a century ago for leprosy patients, now called Hansen’s disease.
It appears to be the last county in the United States to record 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 been circulating around the United States, infecting at least 24 million Americans and killing more than 400,000. The virus has spread from large cities to sparsely populated rural counties, before eventually reaching even the most remote areas that have worked hard to keep the virus at bay.
To identify the last of the more than 3,000 counties that appear to be affected by the virus, the Journal analyzed data from Johns Hopkins and individual states to see if Covid-19 reached every county in the 48 adjacent states and Hawaii. Alaska has no formal counties, but its coronavirus dashboard shows cases in all neighborhoods of the state and census areas for which the state reports.
During the year, the list of the most affected counties changed, in general, from the populated to the small ones before the current winter increase.