Rural spread of coronavirus eased a little last week, but rural counties still disproportionately hard-hit

New coronavirus infection rates from Sept. 5-12. Daily Yonder map;
click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Though coronavirus deaths and new infections fell a little in rural America last week, more than one-third of the nation's 2,000 rural counties continued to have high rates of new coronavirus infections. "In addition, for the fifth week in a row, rural counties continued to produce a disproportionately larger share of the nation’s new covid-19 infections and deaths," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder's weekly analysis of the pandemic in rural America.

Rural covid-19 deaths fell below 1,000 last week for the first time in two months, clocking in at 970, Murphy and Marema report.

The number of red-zone rural counties fell from 806 to 701 during the week of Sept. 6-12, the first significant drop in more than two months. Red zones are defined by the White House Coronavirus Task Force as counties with 100 or more new cases per 100,000 in population. The number of rural red zones has held steady or increased since mid-July while metropolitan red zones have fallen consistently in the same time period, Murphy and Marema report.