SIMLA, Colo. – This isolated farming community on the high plains is the last place that locals expect to be first for anything, especially a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus. But on Wednesday, state health officials announced that the first known case of the variant had been confirmed in the United States in a National Guard soldier sent to help with a Covid-19 outbreak in the Good Samaritan Society nursing home.
A second soldier at the nursing home has tested positive and may also have the variant, Emily Travanty, the interim director of the state health lab, said in a conference with reporters on Wednesday.
All 26 residents of the nursing home and 20 of its 24 regular employees have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past few weeks, and four residents have died. It was not clear if the two National Guard soldiers were infected at the nursing home or picked up the virus before coming to Simla. They arrived on December 23, after most of the incidents took place at the facility, dr. Rachel Herlihy, an epidemiologist in Colorado, said.
Simla is an unlikely site for a virus variant recently detected in the UK. Most things that happen do not happen here. Trends come and go without notice. News is usually something that is watched from a distance. For generations, this windswept piece of grass with a lawn of about 6,000 feet, about 80 miles southeast of Denver, was shaped primarily by the timeless rhythms of raising livestock.
On Wednesday morning, after the news of the virus broke in Simla, a resident was asked what had changed in the lonely cobbled street in the city in the 29 years she had lived there. She looked west in the direction of the snow-covered clutter outside MT Small Engine Repair, then eastward, where a herd of wild turkeys slowly crossed the main street in front of the completely empty Coach-Lite Motel, saying, ‘Nothing. ”
This remained fairly true when the virus arrived in the United States early in the year. Many of the approximately 600 inhabitants of Simla went on to assume that the pandemic, like most things that would befall the country, would pass.
“When the virus first started in the spring, it was calving season and we were too busy paying much attention to it,” said Don Bailey, a retired biology teacher who now owns black Angus cattle on a farm. driving outside the town. “We went to see the herd five or six times a day, and you do not have to wear a mask when you are with the cows.”
The summer passed almost no cases in the country, and community life continued with little change. The 4-H members exhibited their prize sheep and cattle at the digging show, the school stayed in the session and the parent still gathered every morning for coffee at Simla’s solitary breakfast place, the Country Corner Cafe.
“We canceled a meal we had with friends every Wednesday, but otherwise things usually stayed the same,” he said. Bailey, the 71-year-old farmer, said. Even with the pandemic, he kept open the one-time ancient hall museum he built in an outbuilding – even though the drop of visitors would hardly violate most social distance determinations.
The city’s sense of isolation over the global problem changed late in the fall when a second wave of infections swept across Colorado and Simla and Elbert County, sending it to the state’s threat level “serious risk”, where it still remains today. Soon everyone in this close-knit community knew someone who was ill.
“I now have a friend in the ICU,” said Cené Kurtchi, 71, who runs the cafe with her husband, Michael. ‘There are a lot of people in the city who are sick. They will say it’s just flu or bronchitis, but it’s 42 miles to the nearest place you can test. ”
The response to the virus is shaped not only by geography but also by politics. President Trump won 74 percent of the vote here in November. Signs supporting him still sprout on almost every block. One on the fence of a quiet side street reads: “SAVE FREEDOM, VOICE CURRENT.”
In a pandemic in which precautions have become political, many residents refuse to wear masks. On Wednesday, about a quarter of the shopping in the Simla Food Store exposed their faces, even though they were only half a block from the nursing home, where the entire patient population recently tested positive and the mutant virus emerged.
Me. Kurtchi shook her head as she discussed the lack of masks. Some of her longtime neighbors appealed to the cafe because she and her husband needed masks.
On Wednesday, television news crews gathered in front of the modest nursing home in one floor while cleaning crews in dangerous costumes discreetly entered through a back door and the strong smell of cleaning supplies blew into an alley.
The state on Tuesday sent a team to the nursing home to collect new samples from residents and staff members. Based on the samples tested so far, dr. Herlihy said the variant did not appear to be circulating in the facility, but that more samples were tested on Wednesday.
The National Guard soldier confirmed that the variant was isolated at home in Arapahoe County, in the suburbs of Denver and the one with the alleged case was isolated in a hotel in the eastern city of Limon, Dr. Herlihy said.
The owner, Carla Tracy, had just put half a dozen local cats in the winter sun outside the front door in Simla’s lonely craft shop, on the dirt road where the only visitor was. her the new variant came to their city.
“Dear, this little town that most people can’t even find on a map,” she said. ‘And we thought we would not have much trouble with the virus. Then it hit us. Just go show that it’s everywhere. ‘