(Newser)
– It took less than a year for COVID-19 to spread to each of America’s more than 3,000 counties. The last county to register an infection was Kalawao County, Hawaii, the smallest and least populous county in the country, where quarantine has been a way of life for over a century, the Wall Street Journal reports. The county is on the Kaluapapa peninsula, on the island Moloka’i. Steep cliffs separate it from the rest of the island and the only access by land is via a mule trail. People with leprosy, now known as leprosy, were exiled there from 1866 to 1969 and the current 70 or so residents include about a dozen leprosy patients, with an average age of 86, reports the Washington Post.
Hawaii health officials say the county’s first coronavirus case was reported in December, weeks after a case was finally reported in Loving County, Texas, population 169. A Honolulu-negative resident tested positive after flying from back to the county. Authorities say the virus did not spread to the community because the person and others on the flight were quarantined after arrival. “For me, that person was a hero, because they were honest and reported it, and followed the quarantine rules when they returned from outside the settlement,” Glenn Wasserman, head of the department of communicable diseases and public health nursing in the Department of Hawaii Health, tells the diary. (Read more stories from COVID-19.)