Luck? Geography? No testing? Why these KY counties still have no confirmed COVID-19 cases.
There have been no confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in Lee County, but it’s creeping closer.
Last week, two residents of adjoining Owsley County tested positive for the virus. Many people from Owsley County make the short drive on KY 11 to shop in the Lee County seat of Beattyville, which has more stores.
“That’s when people really started worrying here,” said Tabitha Gabbard, who works at Jack’s Hometown IGA grocery in Beattyville.
Since the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Kentucky March 6, the virus has been documented in nearly every county, with the number of cases topping 3,700. Deaths from the resulting respiratory disease COVID-19 rose to 200 on Friday.
But so far, 13 counties still don’t have a confirmed case.
They are scattered around the state: coal counties Bell and Harlan in southeastern Kentucky; Fulton County, clear across the state in the flat land along the Mississippi River; Metcalfe County, in the south-central part of the state, an island surrounded by counties dealing with cases.
In Adair County, next door to Metcalfe, an outbreak at a nursing home helped push the number of cases past 60, with six deaths, according to the Lake Cumberland District Health Department.
Lee County is among three neighbors in the hills of Appalachia — Estill, Wolfe and Magoffin — that haven’t yet had a confirmed case.
So why have a handful of the state’s 120 counties so far escaped having to deal with a positive case?
There are some common factors, according to local officials and residents.
For one thing, the counties without confirmed cases are largely rural, and several don’t have a big-box retailer such as Walmart to draw crowds.
Lee County has a population of about 7,400, according to the U.S. Census, spread over 211 square miles.
“We were really naturally dispersed anyway,” said county Judge-Executive Charles “Chuck” Caudill Jr., a Republican.
Harlan County Magistrate Paul Browning III also pointed to the lower population density in his county.
“To a degree we’re socially distant just by geography,” he said.
Several of the counties without cases don’t have large manufacturing plants, and in some that do most plants are closed.
A good number of people in Lee County travel to Lexington or Winchester to work, but with many workplaces closed, that travel has been reduced, said Jon Allen, the emergency management director.
“The frequency of people in and out is probably much less” than in other counties these days, he said.
Local officials in several counties without a case said they have worked to hold down crowds and push social distancing.
Popular all-terrain vehicle parks in Lee and Harlan counties shut down, for instance, and health and government officials have worked with retailers on measures such as allowing only one person from a family into stores.
Magoffin County Judge-Executive Matt Wireman said he issued executive orders for stores to set up one-way aisles, so people shouldn’t have to pass each other, and limiting the number of people in stores to five per 1,000 square feet.
He got some pushback, but after some residents went to stores in another county and got worried because of less stringent controls, they came back home to shop, he said.
People are concerned about the virus showing up in Magoffin County, where many residents have diabetes or other health conditions that could make them susceptible to worrisome complications if they are exposed, said Wireman, a Democrat.
“People are staying at the house,” he said.
At Jack’s IGA in Beattyville, employees are wiping down shopping carts, door handles and gas pumps to try to thwart coronavirus.
That suits employee Laci Vanderpool, who was wearing a mask and gloves as she rang up groceries Thursday.
“I was already a germaphobe before this anyway,” she said.
People in the store appeared to be staying clear of others, but customer Betty Johnson said some people in the county aren’t taking the virus seriously.
“You’re blowing this out of proportion,” is something she hears often, she said.
People are keeping a close eye on the situation, though.
The headline this week in the Three Forks Tradition, a weekly newspaper in Lee County: “Lee County eludes virus another week.”
Officials in several counties without confirmed cases said the virus is probably already there, but hasn’t been identified because of a lack of testing.
That’s been an issue statewide. The state is increasing its testing capacity, but so far less than 1 percent of residents have been tested.
In Harlan County, which started the one-person per store policy before the state did and removed basketball goals at parks to discourage crowds, relatively few people have been tested, said Judge-Executive Dan Mosley.
Mosley, a Democrat, has been stressing to people to not get complacent over the lack of positive tests.
“There’s a high likelihood that you’re missing people who have it,” Mosley said. “We don’t want people panicked, but we need them to understand there’s a seriousness here like we’ve never seen in our lifetimes.”
There is some concern about people bringing in the virus from other counties or states.
If local people see a car with a Tennessee license plate at a local store, “they go ballistic,” said Leslie Bledsoe, head of a charitable group in Harlan County called With Love from Harlan.
At mid-week in Metcalfe County, only 25 people out of a population of 10,000 had been tested, said Judge-Executive Harold D. Stilts, a Republican.
Some Metcalfe County residents work in factories in neighboring Barren County, but some of those are closed, and some local manufacturers also are closed, which helps limit potential exposure to the virus, Stilts said.
Residents are being careful, he said.
“They know that it’s out here and it could get here,” Stilts said.
Residents of several counties with no confirmed cases wonder if the virus already sickened people there in December and January, before it was known in the U.S., and created some immunity so cases aren’t showing up in the current wave.
In Lee County, Harlan County and others, people talked of a respiratory illness earlier this year that left people coughing, short of breath and suffering for weeks.
“There was just post after post (on Facebook), ‘This is the worst flu I’ve ever had,’ “ said Browning, the Harlan County magistrate.
Scott Lockard, director of the Kentucky River District Health Department, said he’s heard that talk. The district covers seven counties, including Lee and Wolfe.
The area was the earliest in the state last flu season to hit outbreak status, Lockard said.
However, there won’t be a way to tell if coronavirus moved through the area earlier, or potentially created some immunity, until tests become available to see if people have antibodies indicating their bodies fought off the virus, he said.
He pointed out Kentucky also had a very mild winter, so there wasn’t cold weather to kill off allergens that bother people.
Lockard said coronavirus testing has not been as widely available as he would have liked, but has been available for people showing the most severe symptoms, and still there have been few cases in the district.
Lockard said the efforts that officials and businesses in his area have made to promote social distancing have worked to limit exposure to the virus, though officials in some rural counties with positive cases also have worked hard on that front.
Lockard said he expected Eastern Kentucky to be hit harder by the virus, and that that may still happen.
It will be worth studying in the aftermath of the pandemic why some counties didn’t have as many cases as others, or didn’t see them as early, he said.
“There’s just more questions than answers now,” Lockard said.
This story was originally published April 24, 2020 at 3:28 PM.
