Special Report

These are the Counties in the Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 30, 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 34,256,300 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 26,404 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 12,114 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 10,471 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, Benton County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 1,092 infections in Benton County, or 12,600 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Benton County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Lafayette area, it also has more deaths attributable to the virus per capita than the metro area as a whole. There have been a total of 173 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Benton County, compared to 123 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 July 28, 2021.

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