Covid-19 Is Worse in the Dakotas Now Than It Was in the Spring's Hot Spots
The percentage of tests for Covid-19 coming back positive in South Dakota has soared to 46%. That’s more than eight times the World Health Organization’s recommended 5% threshold for businesses to be open. As Covid cases surge across the U.S. and in Europe, South Dakota and North Dakota hold a distinct position: Each has more new virus cases per capita than any other states have seen since the pandemic began. South Dakota has the most and North Dakota the second-most.
“Those who don’t want to wear a mask shouldn’t be shamed into wearing one,” wrote South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, in an opinion piece published in the Rapid City Journal last week. Hospital visits and caring for symptomatic people are times when masks are appropriate, she wrote.
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Health officials have several explanations for why the virus is spreading in the sparsely populated Dakotas. Viruses typically move unevenly from one community to another, especially to new populations that had few cases earlier in the pandemic and hardly anyone one is immune, they said. Large public gatherings may also have spread it, and few people wearing masks in public is a cause, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
South Dakota’s positivity rate, as reported by Johns Hopkins University, is 46%. That is roughly double the 20% and 24% rate that Texas and Arizona, respectively, saw over the summer, prompting their Republican governors to close businesses such as bars while Texas also began requiring masks. It is on par with the positivity rate New York recorded in April, when testing was much more limited. North Dakota’s positivity rate is 11%. The state has averaged 109 new cases per 100,000 people daily over the past seven days, while South Dakota has averaged 115 cases. By contrast, the highest number of new cases in New York was 59 per 100,000 on April 14.
Hospitalizations and deaths are also rising in both states. Hospitalizations have roughly doubled in the past month, to 412 from 209 in South Dakota and to 284 from 105 in North Dakota. Hospitalizations and deaths typically lag a few weeks behind infection diagnoses. People in their 20s and 30s have seen some of the highest numbers of new cases, and health officials said it is difficult to stop the virus from spreading from young people to more vulnerable populations such as the elderly.
Dr. Osterholm likened the disease to a forest fire that may spread unpredictably, but will always be the most severe when there is fresh, dry wood to burn. The virus is now moving through a new community, with little to hinder it, he and other health officials said.
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