Special Report

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

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 30, 2021 5:45 am

Last Updated: July 30, 2021 4:33 pm

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 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area, located in Florida, a total of 307,349 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 10,143 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 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater , there are parts of the metro area where this is not the case.

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 156,969 infections in Hillsborough County, or 11,384 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 133 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Hillsborough County, compared to 158 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 July 28, 2021.

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