COVID Is Killing Rural Americans At Twice The Rate Of Urban Residents
HuffPost
"We turned rural communities into kill boxes," the head of the National Rural Health Association said.
The COVID-19 death rate in rural America is now more than twice the death rate of urban areas, according to a new study.
The first surge of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 initially hit urban areas hardest, with high rates of infections and deaths, according to the study for the Rural Policy Research Center published in September. At the time, many rural communities were largely untouched.
But subsequent waves of the pandemic tore through rural areas, where many people are older, in poorer health, unvaccinated, more likely to live in poverty and where medical facilities are often inadequate or overcrowded. Rural rates of infections and deaths began pulling ahead of metropolitan areas at the beginning of summer 2020, the study noted.
