Covid Ravages Rural America, Sweeping Through Montana’s Plains

Montana’s Big Horn County has 5,000 square miles, vast stretches of gravel roads and just two outposts for health care: an 18-bed critical access hospital and a clinic for the Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribal reservations.

Covid-19’s sweep across rural America is forcing small regional hospitals and far-flung facilities like these, many with few doctors and no ventilators, to combat a virus that has stressed even the world’s biggest health-care systems.

In Hardin, the seat of the Connecticut-sized county, Mayor Joe Purcell doubles as head of nursing for a long-term care home. He’s worked all but two days since the ...