Special Report

COVID-19: This is the Most Dangerous County in the Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN Metro Area

Samuel Stebbins

Published: May 11, 2021 4:15 am

Though vaccine distribution is well underway across the United States, the novel coronavirus continues to spread through the population. To date, there have been 32,210,800 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Lafayette-West Lafayette metropolitan area, located in Indiana, a total of 25,177 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 11,551 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 9,845 cases per 100,000 people.

The higher than average per capita COVID-19 infection rate across Lafayette-West Lafayette is being driven by a high concentration of the virus in one area in particular.

The broader Lafayette metro area comprises three counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Tippecanoe County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 22,315 infections in Tippecanoe County, or 11,789 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Tippecanoe County than they are across all of the Lafayette area, however. There have been a total of 115 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Tippecanoe County, in line with 115 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Lafayette-West Lafayette metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of May 9, 2021.

These are all the counties in Indiana where COVID-19 is slowing (and where it’s still getting worse).