The coronavirus has now invaded every country in the US, including the smallest one – a remote Hawaiian island with less than 100 inhabitants that was home to a leper colony.
Kalawao County, which is so remote that it receives supplies per acre once a year, recorded its first case of COVID-19 in December, almost a year after the deadly bug in the U.S. in Snohomish County near Seattle emerged , reports the Wall Street Journal.
The small enclave on Molokai Island was established in 1865 for patients with leprosy – now known as Hansen’s disease – who would be banned there for life, according to the newspaper, which reviewed the data of Johns Hopkins and individual states for its report.
Hawaiian health officials have taken steps to repel the settlement after watching the disease sweep through U.S. nursing homes early last year – and authorities have banned visits to the country for its five remaining Hansen patients, whose average age is 86, according to the Journal.
Some of the five have serious underlying health conditions that put them at high risk for serious complications or death due to the coronavirus, Hawaii health official Glenn Wasserman told the news office.
But the secluded county eventually filed its first case after a resident returned from a trip to Honolulu after receiving a COVID-19 test. The person, who was symptom-free, then tested positive, reports the Journal.
However, the virus did not spread because the person and three close contacts on the same flight were immediately quarantined.
“To me, that person was a hero because they were honest, and they reported it, and they followed the rules of quarantine when they came back from outside the settlement,” Wasserman told the newspaper.