Rural covid-19 roundup: Pandemic brain drain on nurses threatens rural health care; N.D. gives up contact tracing

Keeping up with pandemic news can be rather like drinking from a firehose these days; here are some of the top stories from this week:

A Texas rancher who lives eight miles away from the nearest town writes about how she felt safe from the pandemic—until she became infected with the coronavirus. Read more here.

Rural doctors share about the realities of working in overcrowded, financially stressed rural hospitals during the pandemic. Read more here.

Rural areas send their sickest patients to cities, straining hospital capacity. Read more here.

A thousand U.S. hospitals are "critically short" on staff, and more expect to be soon. Read more here.

The pandemic's "brain drain" on nurses threatens both budgets and rural health care. Read more here.

Mask mandates work to slow the spread of the coronavirus, a Kansas study has found. Read more here.

A contact tracer says the pandemic is so bad in North Dakota that they've given up. Read more here.

Health-care workers to Americans: 'We didn't go to nursing school to be martyrs'. Read more here.