Coronavirus hotspots at meatpacking plants – especially in the Midwest – are a major source of Covid-19 in most of the rural counties with the worst infection rates.

Fourteen of the 25 counties with rural America’s highest infection rates link the spread of the virus back to food-processing facilities. Prison and nursing homes were the other major sources of infections in the 25 rural hotspot counties.

The Daily Yonder calculated the infection rate for the nation’s 1,977 rural counties. For the 25 rural counties with the highest rates of coronavirus infection, we searched local and state news sources for reports on those counties.

We are living in a new world, a world racing online as social distancing forces many of us to work, communicate and connect in new ways. In the United States alone, state and local directives have urged 316 million Americans to stay in and, when possible, work from home. As communities around the world adapt to a world with COVID-19, broadband connectivity and access are more critical to our lives and livelihoods than ever before.

Broadband already powers much of our modern lives, but COVID-19 has acted as an accelerant, a fuel of sorts that has driven many essential activities online. All learning, services, commerce, most workplaces and daily interactions online require a high-speed connection to the internet. Those without access to this online world – more than 18 million Americans with 14 million living in rural areas, according to the Federal Communications Commission – risk falling farther behind. While 18 million is a big number – more than the entire populations of Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee combined – a new study has found that the actual number of people lacking access to broadband in the US is closer to 42 million.

School is about to be out for summer.

Spring 2020 was a semester like no other after Oklahoma schools switched to a distance learning environment to combat the spread of COVID-19.

But another semester like this one is unlikely next year. Earlier this week, the State Department of Education laid out several options for school calendars that should prevent massive closures and a statewide shift to distance learning.

Those options include staggering start dates for grades, building in virtual days of instruction, starting school early, adding night classes or Saturday school and taking more and longer breaks throughout the year.

When schools in Owsley County, Ky., closed in early March, James Barrett hopped on his bus each morning to deliver meals to hundreds of students.

Then the special education teacher, who is also a bus driver for the rural district, would head home and log in for Zoom meetings with his high school special education students—some of whom have 3rd- and 4th-grade level skills in reading, writing, and math.

Across the country, widespread school closures have upended special education, which is administered through carefully constructed plans called Individualized Education Programs and require extensive services that are not easily transferred to the internet, even for families who have access.

And, while each student in Owsley County has access to high-speed internet, that does not mean they have it at home. In this rural community where the median household income is $15,805, the third lowest in the nation, not everyone can afford the $50 per month fees.

In 1936, roughly 90% of America’s urban areas had access to electricity, while roughly the same proportion of rural America was still in the dark. The Rural Electrification Act, signed that year as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, turned on the lights in isolated rural areas.

As the coronavirus pandemic lays bare America’s digital divide, some advocates argue that now is the time to make a big, bold investment in the country’s broadband infrastructure.

“If there was ever a moment to do the rural electrification of our time, this is it,” said Matt Dunne, executive director of the Center on Rural Innovation in Hartland, Vermont.