Special Report

This Is the County in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: January 25, 2022 4:45 am

As the omicron variant spreads, new daily cases of COVID-19 have hit new highs in the United States. To date, there have been 68,199,900 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metropolitan area, which covers parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, a total of 961,870 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 19,990 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — in line with the national rate of 20,846 cases per 100,000 people.

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

The broader Boston metro area comprises seven counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Essex County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 188,286 infections in Essex County, or 24,108 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Essex County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Boston 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 367 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Essex County, compared to 284 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Jan. 21, 2022.

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