That chart is unreadable. The article cites increases without giving hard numbers in these heartland communities. If Gopher Gulch, ND goes from 2 cases to 5, it is not a big deal. Some of these counties may be peaking because they started later. Some could be suffering from a single outbreak in a nursing home which would have happened regardless. Also, there are a LOT of heartland counties. If you have a thousand of them, dozens will go up even if they are stable overall.
Overall, an uninformative article.