A year ago, health officials announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States in Snohomish County, Wash., Near Seattle. Less than 11 months later, the virus reached an isolated Hawaiian enclave established more than a century ago for leprosy patients, now called leprosy.
It appears to be the last U.S. county to file 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 run across the United States, infecting at least 24 million Americans and killing more than 400,000. The virus spread from large cities to sparsely populated rural counties before finally reaching even the most remote areas that worked diligently to keep the virus under control.
To identify the last of the more than 3,000 counties that appear to have been affected by the virus, The Journal reviewed data from Johns Hopkins and individual states to see if Covid-19 reached each county in the 48 contiguous states and Hawaii. Alaska has no formal counties, but its coronavirus data panel shows cases in all the state’s districts and census areas to which the state is reporting.
Throughout the year, the list of most affected counties has generally changed from populous to small before the current winter surge.