Guam

The Washington Post

Your questions, answered

“Every day I see that Guam has the highest number of infections. What’s happening there? I’ve never seen a story about Guam.”  —Sharon in South Carolina

Guam actually has the highest daily infection rate of any U.S. state or territory right now. The North Pacific island has reported about 1,000 new infections in the last two weeks — an alarming fraction of Guam's 168,000 residents.

"Our island right now is sick,” Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said last week as she extended a general lockdown though the end of September, according to the Guam Daily Post. The Pacific Daily News reported that the governor is one of several officials on the island to have contracted the disease since it began spiking in August.

Several other U.S. islands — notably Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands — have recently been battling surges of the disease after avoiding the brunt of the pandemic earlier in the year, according to the New York Times. “The situation in Guam seems especially problematic,” the paper wrote, “with cases emerging in several schools, at the territorial port authority and on its police force.”

It's also notable that, according to the Pacific Daily News, nearly 20 percent of Guam's cases have been members of the U.S. military, which has a dominating presence on this tiny island located more than 1,000 miles off the coast of the Philippines.

Guam's outbreak demonstrates how covid-19 has spread to some of the most isolated parts of Earth, and the territory will probably face challenges that its mainland cousins don't. Guam only has 60 hospital beds designated for covid-19 patients, according to the Daily Post. It had nearly that many new infections so far today alone.