Special Report

COVID-19: This is the Most Dangerous County in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metro Area

Samuel Stebbins

Published: June 11, 2021 3:15 am

Though vaccine distribution is well underway across the United States, the novel coronavirus continues to spread through the population. To date, there have been 33,056,400 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metropolitan area, which covers parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, a total of 1,008,079 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 10,571 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — in line with the national rate of 10,104 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though COVID-19 infections per capita are in line with the national average across Chicago-Naperville-Elgin , 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, Grundy County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 5,972 infections in Grundy County, or 11,824 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Grundy County than they are across all of the Chicago area, however. There have been a total of 150 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Grundy County, compared to 177 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 June 9, 2021.

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