Rural Missouri starting to feel the effects of Covid-19

Over 350 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Clinton County, Mo since March.

Officials ini rural northwest missouri are voicing their concerns over the spread of covid-19 in their community, good evening i'm alan van zandt.

With challenges such as sparce locations and limited resources rural health officials are planning for a tough winter season ahead.

Kq2's ron johnson spoke with the clinton county health director and shows us the impact of the virus there.

<<ron johnson reporting parts of rural northwest missouri are starting to feel the effects of covid-19 so says the director of the clinton county health department.

[blair shock] sometime about mid august we started to see an increase, and then in the last two or three weeks we've seen just an incredible increase in the number of cases.

He says he's concerned about rural hospital capacity over the next few months as we make our way flu season, and of course covid-19.

[shock] not every county has a hospital, the rural hospitals that we do have have a limited bed capacity and they have a limited capacity of higher acuity care.

In clinton county alone, his department reports over 350 cases of covid- 19.

68 of which the department says are active.

They report 22 hospitalizations and 3 deaths in the county.

Those three deaths reported in the last week.

And while the health director says the virus is spreading within long term care facilities in the county, it's not exclusive to those places or people within their age groups.

Even those cases that aren't coming in from long term care, a large majority of them are folks 55+ up in the age range where we really start to get concerned.

He stresses the importance of everyone taking the virus seriously to protect the vulnerable, control the spread and prevent deaths.i get very frustrated when certain folks in the public want to say well, they were old just because you're old doesn't mean you should pass away from a preventable illness.

An illness doesn't care about your politics, anybody's susceptible and this is us as a society having to deal with it.

Ron johnson kq2 news.>> clinton county's health director also says the impact of the pandemic is starting to an effect on rural hospitals whether they're treating covid patients or not.