These Are the 20 Counties Where the Most People Have Died From COVID-19

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 5, 8:18AM EST

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These Are the 20 Counties Where the Most People Have Died From COVID-19 — © Go Nakamura / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The media presents COVID-19 confirmed and fatal case data to the public in several ways. These include daily increases, seven-day averages, cases and deaths per 1,000, and states and counties where the disease has spread the fastest. One of the most staggering numbers shows how many people actually have died of the disease in America’s largest counties. In many, the figure has surged into the thousands.

As would be expected, the counties with the most coronavirus deaths are often those with the largest populations. Since large cities are rarely directly adjacent, these counties tend to be geographically distant from one another. The exception to this trend are the numbers of fatal cases in and around New York City. Each of the city’s five boroughs is also a county. The fatality count in four of these is among the top 20 counties by that measure. COVID-19 ravaged the city, particularly in March and April. Notably, several of the other counties on the list of those with the highest fatal case counts are adjacent to New York City or nearby. This includes three counties in New Jersey. These totals mean that New York City was at the center of seven of the 20 counties with the highest fatal case counts.

Most of the other counties with the highest fatal case counts are home to America’s major cities. Cook County, home to Chicago, has the second-highest number of fatal cases. Maricopa County is also high on the list and includes Phoenix. Wayne County is on the list, and Detroit is within its borders. Harris County has borders that are nearly identical to Houston.
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Each of the 20 counties on the list has had at least 1,500 fatal cases. That is more than the total figure for all of Oklahoma. At the top of the list, Los Angeles County has had 7,097 deaths. It is also the largest county in the country by population at 10,098,052. Cook County ranked second by fatal cases at 5,517 and is the second-largest U.S. county by population at 5,223,719.

These are the 20 American counties with the most fatal cases.

County	State	Population	Deaths
Los Angeles	California	10,098,052	7,097
Cook	Illinois	5,223,719	5,517
Queens	New York	2,298,513	5,140
Kings	New York	2,600,747	5,129
Miami-Dade	Florida	2,715,516	3,675
Maricopa	Arizona	4,253,913	3,632
Bronx	New York	1,437,872	3,403
Wayne	Michigan	1,761,382	3,065
Harris	Texas	4,602,523	2,823
Middlesex	Massachusetts	1,595,192	2,290
Nassau	New York	1,356,564	2,216
Essex	New Jersey	793,555	2,148
New York	New York	1,632,480	2,126
Bergen	New Jersey	929,999	2,064
Suffolk	New York	1,487,901	2,021
Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	1,575,522	1,897
Hidalgo	Texas	849,389	1,726
Palm Beach	Florida	1,446,277	1,599
Clark	Nevada	2,141,574	1,540
Hudson	New Jersey	668,631	1,534

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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.