A positive Covid-19 test has led to closure of Big Bend National Park/Rebecca Latson file

Editor's note: This updates with comments from Big Bend superintendent.

Knowing that the nearest hospital was 100 miles away, and that it has just 25 beds and four ventilators, made it relatively easy for Big Bend National Park Superintendent Bob Krumenaker to decide to close his park to the public Thursday after one of his employees was diagnosed with Covid-19.

"We are the fifth-hottest spot in the nation right now, our county (Brewster) is. That’s according to the New York Times," Krumenaker said during a phone call. "I have every expectation this is going to increase. We have a lot less than six degrees of separation in a community like this. I have one case, but I have a whole bunch of people in quarantine right now who have had direct contact."

The employee who contracted the disease has been self-quarantining at home since the diagnosis was made, but they had been going to work and interacting with a few other employees.

With a year-round residential community of roughly 200 that ranges in age from young children to adults in their 70s, the park superintendent quickly pushed to close his park not because he was concerned about visitors contracting Covid-19 but because the disease could run like wildfire through that year-round community and medical care was so far away in Alpine, Texas, at the Big Bend Regional Medical Center.

"All the reasons why (Washington) supported us to close in April are still there. And they were largely related to we are 100 miles from a hospital that has 25 beds and four ventilators," Krumenaker said. "I believe we are probably the national park in the lower 48 that is furthest from adequate medical care, either by miles or by time.

“I think even in a place like Dry Tortugas or Channel Islands, you could probably airlift quicker," he said. "But by road, I doubt that outside of northern Alaska that there is a park that is further from a decent hospital from here. And that hospital interestingly has been farming its serious patients out to Odessa, Texas, so technically they’ve had no hospitalizations. That’s because they don’t take them there. They immediately move them somewhere else.

"... The reality is, we are an extremely vulnerable community," said the superintendent. "And so the risk is we’ll spread it to each other. The visitor is not the biggest risk right now.”

Campers had to move out of the park Thursday, and reservations for the next two weeks were canceled; the Chisos Mountains Lodge closed back in April and never reopened.

Big Bend is believed to be the first national park to again close its gates after reopening as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The park in West Texas had closed on April 3 in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease that is sweeping the country. According to the New York Times, Brewster County, with a population of a bit more than 9,000, had 136 total cases Thursday.

Krumenaker, who said five people were in quarantine after coming in contact with the diagnosed individual, said another concern was the time it takes to get tested and then to get the results.

"It’s taking about a week for people to get results from tests," he said.

Outside of Yellowstone National Park, which has been regularly testing its employees and announcing results, and now Big Bend, parks have not been announcing whether any of their employees have tested positive for Covid-19.

Yellowstone announced on Tuesday that in its fourth round of monitoring 190 park and concession employees had been tested and none produced a positive result.

"Initially, one concession employee tested positive and was immediately isolated," a park release said. "The employee was retested twice more, and both tests came back negative. The state health office described the initial test as a false positive and the employee has returned to work. According to the county health officer, a small percentage of false positives are normal in widespread surveillance testing."

Since Yellowstone reopened in May, more than 600 employees and concession workers in that park have been tested. Out of that testing, a contractor working on a construction project in the park had tested positive in June.