Special Report

This Is the County in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: October 26, 2021 5:15 am

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, there have been 44,940,700 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area, located in California, a total of 346,161 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 7,407 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 13,736 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward has fewer COVID-19 infections per capita than the national average, there are parts of the metro area that appear to be higher risk than others.

The broader San Francisco metro area comprises five counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Contra Costa County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 99,740 infections in Contra Costa County, or 8,801 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Contra Costa County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the San Francisco 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 89 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Contra Costa County, compared to 84 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Oct. 22, 2021.

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