While it is nice to see the overall picture of the Covid-19 outbreak in the United States as well as being able to see how the individual states are doing, that leaves the question of where the real outbreaks are located.
The Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University publishes data daily on their GitHub page. The data is broken down to the county level. All that remained was for me to go through the data and see which individual counties were having the largest outbreaks.
So how did I determine who was having the largest outbreak? I used two criteria.
The first criteria was that there had to be more than a 19% growth rate over the last week. That served to eliminate random spikes in reported infection rates due to returning test results. Also, while 19% is a fairly high growth rate, it is more indicative of unrestrained growth instead of being the result of constant testing.
The second criteria was that there needed to be a minimum of 50 new infections reported over the previous week. This served to help remove false positives showing large growth rates from the list that resulted from very small numbers of infections. For example, a county that moved from 2 reported cases to 4 reported cases in one week would show as a staggering 200% growth rate, but that doesn’t indicate an outbreak as far as I’m concerned.
What do those two criteria leave out? The most obvious places that would be left out were places like New York where they still have large numbers of infections but they have their growth rate under control. Other places that were left out were counties that have few infections to date but are rapidly growing.
Remember: there are very few places in the United States that remain untouched by Covid-19. And for those places that remain untouched, they are within a leisurely driving distance from a place where they can become infected.
With those criteria in mind, here are where the outbreaks are currently happening in the United States.
While not an actual county, the District of Columbia is currently suffering an outbreak. It has over 1,100 newly diagnosed cases in the last week.
And here are the counties with the largest outbreaks. To make this list, each county had to have at least 500 new cases reported over the last week.
- Maricopa, Arizona — 1,290 new infections.
- Los Angeles, California — 5,375 new infections.
- Orange, California — 729 new infections.
- San Bernardino, California — 749 new infections.
- San Diego, California — 1,141 new infections.
- Santa Barbara, California — 845 new infections.
- Sussex, Delaware — 685 new infections.
- Palm Beach, Florida — 703 new infections.
- Cook, Illinois — 10,247 new infections.
- DuPage, Illinois — 1,203 new infections.
- Kane, Illinois — 1,386 new infections.
- Lake, Illinois — 1,292 new infections.
- Will, Illinois — 746 new infections.
- Winnebago, Illinois — 510 new infections.
- Polk, Iowa — 669 new infections.
- Woodbury, Iowa — 692 new infections.
- Baltimore City, Maryland — 795 new infections.
- Montgomery, Maryland — 1,589 new infections.
- Prince George’s, Maryland — 2,061 new infections.
- Bristol, Massachusetts — 890 new infections.
- Worcester, Massachusetts — 1,362 new infections.
- Kent, Michigan — 502 new infections.
- Hennepin, Minnesota — 1,514 new infections.
- Stearns, Minnesota — 697 new infections.
- Douglas, Nebraska — 619 new infections.
- Franklin, Ohio — 905 new infections.
- Delaware, Pennsylvania — 815 new infections.
- Providence, Rhode Island — 1,660 new infections.
- Minnehaha, South Dakota — 783 new infections.
- Dallas, Texas — 1,500 new infections.
- Tarrant, Texas — 1,121 new infections.
- Salt Lake, Utah — 582 new infections.
- Fairfax, Virginia — 1,636 new infections.
- Prince William, Virginia — 855 new infections.
- Yakima, Washington — 527 new infections.
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin — 716 new infections.
The next level of outbreaks were counties that had between 400 and 499 newly reported infections.
- Adams, Colorado
- New Castle, Delaware
- Unassigned, Georgia
- Anne Arundel, Maryland
- Ramsey, Minnesota
- Cumberland, New Jersey
- Cuyahoga, Ohio
- Brown, Wisconsin
The next level of outbreaks were counties that had between 300 and 399 newly reported outbreaks.
- Fresno, California
- Tulare, California
- Cobb, Georgia
- Finney, Kansas
- Ford, Kansas
- Leavenworth, Kansas
- Dakota, Nebraska
- Hillsborough, New Hampshire
- Atlantic, New Jersey
- McKinley, New Mexico
- San Juan, New Mexico
- Onondaga, New York
- Mecklenburg, North Carolina
- Hamilton, Ohio
- Lucas, Ohio
- Chester, Pennsylvania
- El Paso, Texas
- Potter, Texas
- Travis, Texas
The next level of outbreaks were counties that had between 200 and 299 newly reported outbreaks.
- Mobile, Alabama
- Montgomery, Alabama
- St. Francis, Arkansas
- Imperial, California
- Kern, California
- Kent, Delaware
- McHenry, Illinois
- Warren, Kentucky
- Frederick, Maryland
- Howard, Maryland
- Anoka, Minnesota
- Dakota, Minnesota
- Nobles, Minnesota
- Lancaster, Nebraska
- Cass, North Dakota
- Tipton, Tennessee
- Alexandria, Virginia
- Arlington, Virginia
- Loudoun, Virginia
- Racine, Wisconsin
The next level of outbreaks were counties that had between 100 and 199 newly reported outbreaks.
- Butler, Alabama
- Franklin, Alabama
- Marshall, Alabama
- Apache, Arizona
- Coconino, Arizona
- Pinal, Arizona
- Kings, California
- Logan, Colorado
- Collier, Florida
- Jackson, Florida
- Liberty, Florida
- Polk, Florida
- Cherokee, Georgia
- Kankakee, Illinois
- Kendall, Illinois
- St. Clair, Illinois
- Allen, Indiana
- Elkhart, Indiana
- Hendricks, Indiana
- Jackson, Indiana
- St. Joseph, Indiana
- Crawford, Iowa
- Wapello, Iowa
- Wyandotte, Kansas
- Fayette, Kentucky
- Cumberland, Maine
- Harford, Maryland
- Wicomico, Maryland
- Hampshire, Massachusetts
- Kalamazoo, Michigan
- Kandiyohi, Minnesota
- Rice, Minnesota
- Washington, Minnesota
- Hinds, Mississippi
- Madison, Mississippi
- Colfax, Nebraska
- Platte, Nebraska
- Cape May, New Jersey
- Niagara, New York
- Duplin, North Carolina
- Forsyth, North Carolina
- Guilford, North Carolina
- Robeson, North Carolina
- Wilkes, North Carolina
- Butler, Ohio
- Miami, Ohio
- Montgomery, Ohio
- Stark, Ohio
- Summit, Ohio
- Texas, Oklahoma
- Marion, Oregon
- Dauphin, Pennsylvania
- Franklin, Pennsylvania
- Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
- Kent, Rhode Island
- Florence, South Carolina
- Greenville, South Carolina
- Hardeman, Tennessee
- Rutherford, Tennessee
- Unassigned, Tennessee
- Moore, Texas
- Accomack, Virginia
- Buckingham, Virginia
- Chesterfield, Virginia
- Manassas,Virginia,US
- Richmond City, Virginia
- Kenosha, Wisconsin
The final level of outbreaks were counties that had between 50 and 99 newly reported infections.
- Dallas, Alabama
- DeKalb, Alabama
- Mohave, Arizona
- Yavapai, Arizona
- Yuma, Arizona
- Jefferson, Arkansas
- Monterey, California
- Solano, California
- Sonoma, California
- Stanislaus, California
- Morgan, Colorado
- Windham, Connecticut
- Charlotte, Florida
- Martin, Florida
- Barrow, Georgia
- Chatham, Georgia
- Hancock, Georgia
- Thomas, Georgia
- Twin Falls, Idaho
- Boone, Illinois
- Champaign, Illinois
- DeKalb, Illinois
- Iroquois, Illinois
- Madison, Illinois
- Sangamon, Illinois
- Bartholomew, Indiana
- Greene, Indiana
- LaPorte, Indiana
- Porter, Indiana
- Tippecanoe, Indiana
- White, Indiana
- Muscatine, Iowa
- Sioux, Iowa
- Kenton, Kentucky
- Logan, Kentucky
- Franklin, Louisiana
- Rapides, Louisiana
- Caroline, Maryland
- Cecil, Maryland
- St. Mary’s, Maryland
- Bay, Michigan
- Berrien, Michigan
- Monroe, Michigan
- Muskegon, Michigan
- Ottawa, Michigan
- Benton, Minnesota
- Carver, Minnesota
- Clay, Minnesota
- Olmsted, Minnesota
- Scott, Minnesota
- Sherburne, Minnesota
- Wright, Minnesota
- Attala, Mississippi
- Forrest, Mississippi
- Holmes, Mississippi
- Jones, Mississippi
- Leake, Mississippi
- Neshoba, Mississippi
- Buchanan, Missouri
- Madison, Nebraska
- Saline, Nebraska
- Sarpy, Nebraska
- Salem, New Jersey
- Dona Ana, New Mexico
- Columbia, New York
- Rensselaer, New York
- Alamance, North Carolina
- Cumberland, North Carolina
- Lee, North Carolina
- Randolph, North Carolina
- Sampson, North Carolina
- Belmont, Ohio
- Tuscarawas, Ohio
- Cumberland, Pennsylvania
- Williamsburg, South Carolina
- Brown, South Dakota
- Hamilton, Tennessee
- Robertson, Tennessee
- Brazos, Texas
- Grayson, Texas
- Randall, Texas
- Williamson, Texas
- Culpeper, Virginia
- Norfolk, Virginia
- Richmond, Virginia
- Rockingham, Virginia
- Shenandoah, Virginia
- Spotsylvania, Virginia
- Stafford, Virginia
- Rock, Wisconsin
- Fremont, Wyoming
There were other counties that came close to meeting these criteria but fell just under the cutoff point. It could have been because they only had 49 infections, or it could have been because their growth rate was only 18%. While there is a case that could be made that they should have been included in the various lists, I feel like this shows where the worst parts of the Covid-19 outbreak are happening.
As always, if anyone is interested in the data that I used, let me know and I will make it available.
Marisa Burnes (dot) com 