Rural COVID-19 relief summary as of April 2021
Throughout the fall and winter, rural America was disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the pandemic more than 94 percent of nonmetropolitan counties were considered ‘red-zone’ counties, those with a new COVID-19 infection rate of 100 or more per 100,000 residents per week.
Unfortunately, while rural America was addressing the pandemic head-on, relief stalled. From July until December 2020, rural providers were facing a disproportionate share of COVID-19 cases without relief equitable to what their urban counterparts were afforded earlier in the pandemic.
The COVID-19 relief packages passed in December 2020 and March 2021 were helpful to rural
providers, but NRHA strongly believes more relief is needed.
This document highlights NRHA’s priorities for COVID-19 relief for rural health care and serves as a
guidepost for legislative and administrative action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, NRHA recently released the association's fiscal year 2022 appropriations requests and several more advocacy-related documents available on NRHA's advocacy page.