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And although cases started to increase this fall in the northern plains, infections have remained relatively rare around Cumberland and many other towns in the mid-Atlantic and northeast.
“Then just before Halloween,” said Rector Reverend Martha Macgill, “it just blew up.
In the first days of November, the priest and her husband were both admitted to hospital with Covid-19. Per capita, Allegany County, where Cumberland is the county seat, now has Maryland’s worst outbreak, and the Cumberland area has the 14th highest recent case count per capita of any metropolitan area in the country.
“It happened in silence, then all of a sudden it was bad,” Ms. Macgill said.
About 1,100 miles west, in Sioux Falls, SD, the fall wave arrived early. Mayor Paul TenHaken said some people in his town mistakenly believed they had come through the worst after a spring wave, mostly confined to a meat-packing plant, arrived and passed.
But the virus has returned and hit the city hard: two of TenHaken’s five staff have tested positive, like dozens more the mayor knows. The Sioux Falls area had the sixth best-known case per capita of all U.S. metropolitan areas. Hospitalizations and infections remain high statewide but have declined slightly in recent days. Mr. TenHaken’s uneasiness remains.
“This week is making me a little nervous, just with all the travel, Thanksgiving, and gatherings,” the mayor said. “I think that will be the real test, how diligent people will be once you get into the holidays.”
Elsewhere in the Midwest, there are localized signs of progress, or at least stabilization, though officials say all of this could prove to be fleeting.
The marginal progress in the Midwest comes after governors in some states, including Illinois, Iowa, and North Dakota, imposed additional restrictions, and after leaders of area hospitals issued public warnings indicating that they were short of capacity to treat the sick.
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