Special Report

This Is the County in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area With the Least COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: October 27, 2021 5:45 am

Last Updated: October 27, 2021 5:48 pm

Following a months long surge driven by the delta variant, new daily cases of COVID-19 are falling once again in the United States. To date, 45,027,013 Americans have been infected with the virus — and 728,404 have died as a result. On a per capita basis, the U.S. has one of the highest known infections rates in the world.

In the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metropolitan area, which covers parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, a total of 476,193 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 13,386 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — in line with the national rate of 13,763 cases per 100,000 people.

Though per capita cases of COVID-19 are closely in line with the national per capita infection rate in Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, there are still parts of the metro area where the per capita infection rate is relatively low.

The broader Minneapolis metro area comprises 16 counties or county equivalents — and of them, Ramsey County in Minnesota has the fewest COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 63,323 infections in Ramsey County, or 11,694 for every 100,000 people.

Though Ramsey County has the lowest per capita infection rate in the Minneapolis metro area, its per capita fatality rate is disproportionately high.

There have been a total of 181 coronavirus-related deaths for every 100,000 people in Ramsey County, above the 145 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Oct. 25, 2021.

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