A recently proposed covariant chiral effective field theory approach is applied to study strangeness $S=-1$ hyperon-nucleon interactions at leading order. 12 low energy constants are introduced by Lorentz invariance, which is different from the heavy baryon approach, where only five appear. The Kadyshevsky equation is employed to iterate the chiral potentials. A quite satisfactory description of the 36 hyperon-nucleon scattering data is obtained with $\chi^2\simeq 17$, which is comparable with the next-to-leading order heavy baryon approach. The results hint at a more efficient way to construct the chiral potentials.