This Is the American City With the Fewest COVID-19 Cases

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 30, 7:30AM EDT

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This Is the American City With the Fewest COVID-19 Cases — © dougtone / Flickr

Despite huge spikes of COVID-19 infections in Brazil, India and several European nations, the United States remains the country with the most confirmed and fatal cases. Even with vaccinations, America is moving through a deadly fourth wave of the disease. Millions of Americans refuse to be vaccinated, despite deaths rising above 2,000 a day. The confirmed case number in the United States has passed 43 million, which is 10 million more than in India. Deaths from the disease have reached close to 700,000, which is one in every 500 Americans.

While new data shows that the risk of contracting COVID-19 is high in almost every part of the country, cities continue to be the sites of major outbreaks and superspreader events. Experts agree that the virus is more likely to spread in group settings where large numbers of people routinely have close contact with one another, such as at colleges, nursing homes, bars and restaurants. Metropolitan areas with a high degree of connectivity between different neighborhoods and a large population may be particularly at-risk.

The metropolitan areas with the lowest incidence of COVID-19 cases are distributed relatively unevenly across the United States. Of the 50 metro areas with the lowest case counts per capita, 26 are in the West, 17 are in the Northeast, five are in the South and two are in the Midwest.

The 50 cities with the lowest incidence of COVID-19 have more than 4,900 fewer coronavirus cases per capita than the country as a whole, but cases are growing at an increasing rate. There were an average of 55.1 daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people in the week ending September 21, an increase from the week prior, when there were an average of 46.1 daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people. In 46 of the 50 cities with the lowest COVID-19 incidence, new cases are rising at a slowing rate.
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To determine the city with the fewest COVID-19 cases, 24/7 Wall St. compiled and reviewed data from state and local health departments. We ranked metro areas based on the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents as of September 21. To estimate the incidence of COVID-19 at the metropolitan level, we aggregated data from the county level using boundary definitions from the U.S. Census Bureau. Population data used to adjust case and death totals came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and are five-year estimates.

The city with the fewest COVID-19 cases is Corvallis, Oregon. Here are the details:

Confirmed COVID-19 cases: 4,540
Confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents: 4,983.2
Cumulative COVID-19 deaths: 27
Cumulative COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents: 29.6
Population: 91,107

Click here to see all the cities with the fewest COVID-19 cases.
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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.