COVID-19: This Is the Deadliest County in the Deadliest State

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 8, 7:38AM EST · Published Mar 6, 11:15AM EST

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COVID-19: This Is the Deadliest County in the Deadliest State — © Jeenah Moon / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The pace at which COVID-19 has spread across America has slowed. Daily confirmed case and fatal case increases are less than half what they were two months ago when there were 225,000 additional cases a day and as many as 4,000 deaths. Nevertheless, the toll has been brutal. According to the Bing COVID-19 Tracker, 527,917 Americans have died, about 20% of the world total. Confirmed cases have reached 29,193,273, about a quarter of the global number. Many scientists believe this figure is far too low because of poor testing across much of the nation.

Vaccinations have joined mask-wearing and social distancing as primary weapons against the spread of the disease. There are three now–from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer. The Biden Administration says there will be enough vaccine for all Americans by the end of May. Almost 17% of Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine. A total of 8.6% have received two doses. The CDC reports 114,133,115 doses have been delivered and from these 85,008,094 shots have been given.

One of the primary, if not the primary causes of concern among epidemiologists is the rise of variants, which appear to be the main driver of new infections. The CDC tracks three variants for the public. These are the B.1.1.7 variant, the B.1.351 variant, and the P.1. One or more of these has been found in 48 states.

Despite progress, marked by the drop in the rise in deaths and cases, some regions of the nation remain hard hit. These are often measured by raw numbers of deaths or cases. Another widely used metric is deaths and cases per 100,000 people in both states and counties. This allows for apples-to-apples comparisons regardless of population size.

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The hardest-hit state as measured by deaths per 100,000 is Virginia at 1.45 as averaged over the last seven days. The state with the lowest comparable number is Maine at 0.05. Within Virginia, the hardest-hit county is Buena Vista County with a figure of 14.55.

Buena Vista County is on the York River, east of Richmond. According to the U.S. Census, its population as of July 1, 2019, was 6,478. Just under 88% of the population is white. At $32,455, its median household income is about $30,000 below the national average. Its 17.2% poverty rate is well above the national figure.

Buena Vista County will lose its distinction as the hardest-hit county in the hardest-hit state, as other countries have for the 14 months since COVID-19 reached America. Substantial human damage is bound to remain.

Click here to read about America’s worst COVID-19 hot spot.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.