Special Report

This Is the County in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: March 1, 2022 2:15 am

There have been 78,050,800 reported cases of COVID-19 in the United States to date — and that number continues to grow every day.

In the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan area, which covers parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, a total of 2,080,716 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 21,819 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 23,857 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though Chicago-Naperville-Elgin has fewer COVID-19 infections per capita than the national average, there are parts of the metro area where this is not the case.

The broader Chicago metro area comprises 14 counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Jasper County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 8,936 infections in Jasper County, or 26,715 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Jasper County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Chicago 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 407 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Jasper County, compared to 246 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Feb. 25, 2022.

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