Special Report

These Are the Counties in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: December 7, 2021 4:45 am

Despite the ongoing vaccination effort, new daily cases of COVID-19 are beginning to rise once again in parts of the United States. To date, there have been 48,413,300 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area, located in Florida, a total of 493,677 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 16,293 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 14,798 cases per 100,000 people.

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

The broader Tampa metro area comprises four counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Hillsborough County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 246,605 infections in Hillsborough County, or 17,884 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Hillsborough County than they are across all of the Tampa area, however. There have been a total of 225 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Hillsborough County, compared to 276 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Dec. 3, 2021.

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