Special Report

These are the Counties in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

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

In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area, located in Washington, a total of 216,235 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 5,676 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 10,471 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue 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 Seattle metro area comprises three counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Pierce County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 58,640 infections in Pierce County, or 6,820 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Pierce County than they are across all of the Seattle area, however. There have been a total of 77 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Pierce County, in line with 78 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area.

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

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