Special Report

This Is the County in the Fort Smith, AR-OK Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: May 17, 2022 4:45 am

There have been 81,417,100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States to date – and that number continues to grow.

In the Fort Smith metropolitan area, which covers parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma, a total of 71,822 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. Adjusted for population, there have been 25,541 confirmed infections for every 100,000 people in the area — in line with the national rate of 24,885 cases per 100,000 people.

Though there is little variance in the per capita COVID-19 infection rate across Fort Smith, there are parts of the metro area where the virus is slightly more common.

The broader Fort Smith metro area comprises four counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Sebastian County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 32,823 confirmed infections in Sebastian County, or 25,751 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Sebastian County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Fort Smith 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 413 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Sebastian County, compared to 351 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Fort Smith metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of May 13, 2022.

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