Analysis from Kaiser Health News finds that huge swaths of the country may end up short of the ICU beds they need in the coming weeks, with challenges just as bad or worse than those faced in New York.
There are 161 of those rural agricultural counties in the United States and only two of them have even a single ICU. And there are a total of six ICU beds overall in those 161 counties. There are 23 of those aging farmlands counties in Kansas, none with an ICU bed, according to the data.
To be fair, those counties are sparsely populated; in total, they only hold about 570,000 people. But they also hold large numbers of older residents, people more susceptible to the virus. In 114 of the counties, 30 percent or more of the population is 60 or older. In some of those remote locales, social distancing might be inherently easier than it is in big urban environments. There’s usually no mass transit system or bustling downtown to aid the virus’s spread. But many of those aging farmland communities are close-knit in other ways. There are often local gatherings at stores, cafés and churches.
In short, we don’t yet know how COVID-19 spreads in those very rural environments. But we’re likely going to find out what that spread looks like in the new few weeks. Even as most eyes have been on New York City recently, the virus has been spreading outside of that metro area. Two weeks ago there were fewer than 800 counties with a confirmed case of the virus. This week, there were 2,300 counties with at least one case.Dante Chinni is a contributor to NBC News specializing in data analysis around campaigns, politics and culture. He is director of the
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