WVXU: Coronavirus hitting rural communities hard

WVXU's Cincinnati Edition talked to a University of Cincinnati epidemiologist about how mortality rates from COVID-19 are surging now in rural America.

Assistant professor Diego Cuadros, director of UC's Health Geography and Disease Modeling Lab, told host Michael Monks that the pandemic is especially dire in rural counties of high-infection states.

Cuadros is part of UC's Geospatial Health Advising Group, which has issued several policy briefs to help health officials respond to the global pandemic. The group is composed of health, geography and statistical modeling experts from the UC College of Pharmacy and the UC College of Arts and Sciences.

"We started in Ohio analyzing health data in Ohio and looking at differences between rural and urban areas. The epidemic spread faster in urban than rural areas. But that was in the early stages of the epidemic," Cuadros said.

But now, Cuadros said, rural areas are seeing a surge in infections with higher mortality rates in rural counties of high-infection states. This is cause for concern because the population in rural areas skews older than that of urban areas. Likewise, rural areas typically have fewer medical resources, particularly intensive-care units.

"The epidemic doesn't behave exactly the same everywhere," Cuadros said.

Listen to the Cincinnati Edition segment.

Read more about Diego Cuadros' work in the latest issue of UC Magazine.

Featured image at top: UC assistant professor of geography Diego Cuadros is part of UC's Geospatial Health Advising Group, which has been tracking the COVID-19 pandemic in Ohio and the United States. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Creative + Brand