Special Report

COVID-19: This is the Most Dangerous County in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area

Samuel Stebbins

Published: June 11, 2021 5:15 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 33,056,400 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area, located in California, a total of 252,882 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 5,411 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 10,104 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward has fewer COVID-19 infections per capita than the national average, there are parts of the metro area that appear to be higher risk than others.

The broader San Francisco metro area comprises five counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Contra Costa County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 70,003 infections in Contra Costa County, or 6,177 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Contra Costa County than they are across all of the San Francisco area, however. There have been a total of 72 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Contra Costa County, compared to 85 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area.

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

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