COVID-19: The American County Where the Most People Have Died

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 15, 8:35AM EDT

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COVID-19: The American County Where the Most People Have Died — © DutcherAerials / E+ via Getty Images

While the growth of COVID-19 cases across the United States has slowed, it remains a tremendous danger. The daily growth of confirmed cases has slowed to less than 100,000 from much more than twice that amount three short months ago. New fatal cases per day now run as low as 1,000, which is much as three-quarters lower than the peak. Nevertheless, there have been 29,633,697 confirmed cases so far, which is about 25% of the world’s total. Fatal cases in the United States are at 538,918, about 20% of the global number. A new forecast from one of the top COVID-19 research organizations is that 598,523 people will die of COVID-19 by July 1. However, the number could be higher if America reopens too quickly.

Vaccination rates have risen quickly in the past two weeks. The Biden administration says it will have enough vaccine for all Americans by May 1. At this point, 21% of Americans have received at least one dose and 11% have been fully vaccinated. Nationwide, 135,846,665 doses have been delivered and 105,703,501 have been given.

There are two challenges to further slowing the spread of the disease. The first is variants, some of which may spread faster than the version that infected most people from last January until recently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks three of these for the public: the B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1 variants. These variants are in all 50 states, and epidemiologists believe that there are more than just three.

The other challenge is the opening up of parts of the United States. Texas, the second-largest state by population, is a case in point. The governor has dropped the state’s mask mandate, allowed a renewal of social gatherings and opened businesses. Public health officials worry this may cause a fourth wave of the disease.
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As the disease surged through its third wave in December and January, the epicenter of cases and deaths moved to Los Angeles County, which developed shortages of hospital beds. The hardest-hit counties earlier in the year had been in and around New York City. That was no longer the case by late 2020. While some counties in New York City and neighboring counties had the highest death counts until early winter, that changed as the disease ravaged southern California.

With 22,474 fatal cases, Los Angeles County has more than twice the death count of the next county on the list, which is Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago, with 9,514. That is followed by Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, with 9,437 fatalities.

Los Angeles County also leads the nation in confirmed cases at 1,210,265. That is a higher number than for all but five states.

Increases in fatal and confirmed cases in Los Angeles County have slowed considerably. Sunday, there were 634 new cases and 28 new deaths. Even those numbers are a reminder that the disease is not close to going away.
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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.