Dire warnings turn true as coronavirus starts ravaging rural areas in US

It was a few weeks back that Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, claimed that the real chaos associated with the coronavirus outbreak is yet to unfold. He predicted that the virus will wreak chaos once it starts spreading across rural areas.

The recent developments in California indicate that the warnings issued by Jha are turning true. In the initial days of the outbreak, coronavirus pandemic was hitting dense urban areas in California, but now, its rural agricultural areas are among the most affected.

Earlier, Los Angeles County was one of the hot spots for new coronavirus infections in California. Later, the pandemic expanded its clandestine clutches to Imperial County. And now, the rural and agricultural county east of San Diego is one of the hotbeds of new cases, and it clearly indicates that the Central Valley is going to face chaos in the coming days.

“The epidemic is moving from urban Latino populations to rural Latino populations,” said George Rutherford, epidemiologist and infectious-diseases expert at UC San Francisco.

As the rural areas in the country are witnessing a drastic surge in coronavirus positive cases, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has urged everyone to accelerate the fundamental protective measures that include, usage of face masks, adopting effective social distancing measures, and avoiding crowds.