In small communities, the people responsible for keeping crucial public services up and running say the pandemic strain is acute. With bare-bones workforces already stretched thin, there is no margin for error when multiple workers have to call in sick.
In Marvell, a tiny Mississippi Delta town of 855 residents tucked among a sea of cotton, soybean and corn fields in Phillips County, Lee Guest is a particularly essential essential worker.
Guest is the mayor and the assistant fire chief, and his day job is as a rural mail carrier. If the four employees of the local water utility don't show up, he knows enough about the system to keep the water flowing.
"There's a handful of us -- we can go get stuff taken care of," he said.
So when he was away from work for a week after contracting covid-19 at the beginning of the year, the worn engine of small-town governance and administration in Marvell sputtered and coughed, but it chugged on.
Out of 13 full-time and 11 part-time employees, six have gotten covid-19. One, who went to a hospital but wasn't admitted, got sick in 2020. The rest have tested positive in the past three weeks.
It's a familiar story in small towns across the country, where the spike in infections from the omicron variant hit local governments with particular force.
The virus has ripped through big cities like Los Angeles and New York, sidelining thousands of police officers and transit operators. In many, leaders have rushed to reassure residents that firefighters and paramedics will show up when they call amid record absences.
The short-term pandemic crises have piled on top of demographic trends that have played out over decades as work has disappeared in industries like agriculture and manufacturing and young people have left for better opportunities elsewhere.
"Longer term, we've seen really strong economic challenges in rural America as the urban-rural divide has expanded," said Brooks Rainwater, director of the National League of Cities' Center for City Solutions.
The pandemic, he said, has compounded those challenges by exacerbating labor shortages, making it tougher for small municipal agencies to quickly staff up if people are sick or decide to leave.
"Rural governments are small by design," he said.
Marvell was never a big city, but longtime residents say it used to be a more lively community.
In the middle of the past century, a commuter railway stopped in downtown, where at one point there were three hotels. Then, the commuter trains became cargo rail, and by the late 1970s, that was gone, too.
Now, the town's one-time two grocery stores and three clothing stores are gone.
Nearly all of the remaining businesses -- including a handful of chain convenience stores and gas stations -- line the highway that ushers travelers toward Helena-West Helena, the county seat and home to the King Biscuit Blues Festival. That gathering brings in hundreds of thousands of music lovers hoping to experience Delta blues.
The pandemic has disrupted more than local government in Marvell.
In the early days of shutdowns, farmers and residents were able to take on projects that they had been putting off, which translated into more business, said Matthew Catlett, owner of three auto and agricultural supply stores in Marvell and the surrounding area.
Amid the omicron-driven surge, Catlett said he is starting to feel a pinch in new ways.
Supply chain problems have caused backups and shortages in everything from microchips and car parts to Pepsi products. An outbreak in Memphis has snarled deliveries.
He has had trouble recruiting workers before the busy season for farmers, which starts in March, and he is concerned that new surges of infection are in the future.
"We need to get more people in here in case something like that does happen," he said.
Bennie Daniels Jr., the town's police chief, said the department was already understaffed when he came down with covid-19 a few days after the mayor tested positive. The department would have as many as four full-time officers and eight part-time officers if it were fully staffed, but right now, there are half that.
Daniels has picked up night shifts to help relieve other staff members. He conducts traffic stops, responds to calls about fights involving juveniles and does whatever else is needed.
"I do everything my guys do, of course," he said.
And then his sergeant -- the other working full-time police officer -- got sick. Daniels asked the county sheriff's office and the state to help patrol in Marvell while he waited out his covid-19 isolation period.
He returned to work, picking up back-to-back shifts, as soon as he was able. Last week, he estimated that his days are 18-20 hours long.
"My hope is that one day we'll get a handle on this thing," he said.
In the meantime, he secured his officers a raise to $15 per hour from $13.
Daniels said everyone in the Police Department is vaccinated and he didn't encounter much pushback over that. Still, the town has not been immune from the political divisions and misinformation around the pandemic that have afflicted communities of all sizes.
Guest said the backlash against encouraging residents to get vaccinated prompted him to quit Facebook for a while.
"I'm getting chewed out by people I grew up with," said Guest, a lifelong resident who describes his ascent to the city's top job almost like he was drafted. "There are times where I just want to be a mailman."
CORRECTION: Marvell is a town in Arkansas. An earlier version of this story's headline incorrectly named the state where Marvell is located.