This Is the County in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

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 44,408,600 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is…

Published October 19, 2021, 5:15am ET · 2 min read

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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 44,408,600 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area, located in Washington, a total of 306,780 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 8,053 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 13,574 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue 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 Seattle metro area comprises three counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Pierce County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 87,720 infections in Pierce County, or 10,202 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Pierce County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Seattle 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 98 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Pierce County, compared to 91 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Oct. 15, 2021.

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

Rank Geography COVID cases per 100,000 people Total cases Deaths per 100,000 people Total deaths
1 Pierce County, WA 10,202 87,720 98 840
2 Snohomish County, WA 7,846 61,718 92 725
3 King County, WA 7,273 157,342 88 1,910
Steven M. Peters
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