Special Report

These are the Counties in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 30, 2021 5:30 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 34,256,300 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metropolitan area, which covers parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, a total of 592,563 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 9,763 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 10,471 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington has fewer COVID-19 infections per capita than the national average, there are parts of the metro area where this is not the case.

The broader Philadelphia metro area comprises 11 counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, New Castle County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 65,613 infections in New Castle County, or 11,819 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in New Castle County than they are across all of the Philadelphia area, however. There have been a total of 153 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in New Castle County, compared to 217 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of July 28, 2021.

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