‘It’s finally got to rural America’: coronavirus surges in the Dakotas

Like many in South Dakota, Curt Soehl believed the sparsely populated state tucked deep into America’s interior would be spared the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. But after a summer in which its stubbornly independent residents broadly flouted public health recommendations, Soehl, a member of the city council in Sioux Falls, the state’s biggest city, noticed the virus creeping closer. 

His two daughters, who are nurses, told him in September about the toll that rising infections were taking on the hospital where they work. Then Soehl’s next door neighbour fell ill, as did another across the street.

Covid-19 deaths are now coming thick and fast...