COVID-19 Outbreak Literally Shuts Down Entire City in Texas

I grew up in a small town of just a few thousand people. While they didn't actually roll the sidewalks up when the stores closed on main street for the evening they might as well have.

But that's nothing like what's happening in the small town of Iraan, Texas, right now.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, the community of about 1,200 people is so overrun with COVID-19 that they have essentially shut the town down. Turn off the lights, lock the doors, this town is closed for business until the current wave of coronavirus is at least a little more under control.

Jason, Rybolt, the CEO at Iraan General Hospital, said that 119 people were tested for the virus during a two-week span in August and 50 of them tested positive. That's a positivity rate of 42%.

Because Iraan is such as small town, and because they're situated well off the beaten path in West Texas, about halfway between Midland-Odessa and the Rio Grande river, they have only minimal medical facilities. One of their residents was so sickened by COVID-19 that they had to be airlifted to a facility in another state. It was either that or wait 12 to 36 hours for an ICU bed closer and inside Texas to become available and the nearest hospitals to Iraan are at least 100 miles away.

The Superintendent of the Iraan-Sheffield ISD, Tracy Canter, issued a statement earlier that with about a fourth of the staff and 16% of the students quarantined because they were either infected or exposed, the schools would be shut down from August 17th until Monday, August 30th.

With the school shut down, the city council facilities closed, most local business locked up, and high school football on hold until things open up again, Iraan, Texas, is literally shut down to to COVID-19.