Upper Midwest leads in new rural coronavirus infections

New coronavirus-infection rates in nonmetropolitan counties, Sept. 27-Oct. 3.
Daily Yonder map; click here for the interactive version.

The coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the Upper Midwest, where high rates of new infections are the norm in most rural counties. More than 90 percent of rural counties in Wisconsin, South Dakota, and North Dakota have troublesome levels of new infections, according to a Daily Yonder analysis. Iowa has 66 of its 78 rural counties (or 85%) with high rates of infection. Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Minnesota each has high rates of infection in two-thirds of their rural counties," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "Those rural counties are on the Daily Yonder’s red-zone list. The red-zone is a White House Coronavirus Task Force designation that identifies localities that need to do more to control the virus. Red-zone counties have infection rates of 100 more new cases per 100,000 over a seven-day period." Read here for more, including an interactive map with state data.