Ask The Answer Person: "Has COVID-19 hit rural Iowa counties harder than urban counties?"

decorahnews.com's Paul Scott answers: "While some states in other parts of the country have had their rural counties hard-hit by the COVID-19 epidemic, the statistics from Iowa paint a different picture.

Before answering the question, however, there's another question which has to be answered: 'What's considered a rural county?'

Fortunately, the answer is the same whether a rural county is one with under 40,000 residents or one with under 30,000 residents.

Iowa has roughly two million people living in the 22 largest counties, with 1.8 million living in the 15 counties with a population over 40,000.  For both groups, the number of COVID-19 cases as of late Friday afternoon was right around one percent of the population.

Iowa's smallest counties--whether you're counting the 77 smallest or 84 smallest--have had a lower rate of COVID-19 cases--just a little higher than half of one percent.

These statistics coincide with what researchers say are the areas most prone to large COVID-19 outbreaks--places with a lot of people in a small area, whether that is an urban area or a particular location, such as a meatpacking plant or a nursing home.

For instance, Buena Vista County, which includes Storm Lake, has been the exception to the generalization that rural counties don't have high COVID-19 case numbers, but it has a large processing plant which has boosted that county's COVID-19 totals to 1,678 people.

In summary, the advice doctors and other health professionals have been giving about COVID-19 is accurate--you reduce your odds of getting it if you avoid being in large crowds."