Now the coronavirus has infiltrated every county in the United States, including the smallest: a remote Hawaiian island with less than 100 inhabitants that was home to a colony of lepers.
Kalawao County, so remote that it gets barge supplies once a year, registered its first case of COVID-19 in December, nearly a year after the fatal error occurred in the U.S. in Snohomish County, near Seattle, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The tiny enclave of Molokai Island was established in 1865 for patients with leprosy (now known as Hansen’s disease) who would go into exile there for life, according to the newspaper, which reviewed data from Johns Hopkins and of several states for their report.
Hawaiian health officials had taken steps to seal the settlement after seeing the disease sweep across U.S. nursing homes early last year – and authorities banned visits to the county to protect the five patients. Hansen’s remains, whose average age is 86, according to the newspaper.
Some of the five have serious underlying health conditions that put them at high risk for serious complications or coronavirus death, health care provider Glenn Wasserman, a Hawaii health official, has reported.
But the secluded county finally filed its first case after a resident returned from a trip to Honolulu after undergoing a COVID-19 test. The person, who showed no symptoms, then tested positive, the newspaper reported.
The virus did not spread, however, because the person and three close contacts on the same flight were immediately quarantined.
“For me, that person was a hero, because he was honest, and they reported it, and they followed the rules of quarantine when they came back from outside the settlement,” Wasserman told the newspaper.