Special Report

These are the Counties in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 30, 2021 3:15 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 34,256,300 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan area, which covers parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, a total of 1,020,834 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 10,705 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — in line with the national rate of 10,471 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though COVID-19 infections per capita are in line with the national average across Chicago-Naperville-Elgin , there are parts of the metro area where this is not the case.

The broader Chicago metro area comprises 14 counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Grundy County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 6,033 infections in Grundy County, or 11,944 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Grundy County than they are across all of the Chicago area, however. There have been a total of 156 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Grundy County, compared to 180 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of July 28, 2021.

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