Special Report

These are the Counties in the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 30, 2021 3:45 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 Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metropolitan area, located in Arkansas, a total of 85,539 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 11,646 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 10,471 cases per 100,000 people.

The higher than average per capita COVID-19 infection rate across Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway is being driven by a high concentration of the virus in one area in particular.

The broader Little Rock metro area comprises six counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Lonoke County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 8,563 infections in Lonoke County, or 11,859 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Lonoke County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Little Rock area, it also has more deaths attributable to the virus per capita than the metro area as a whole. There have been a total of 186 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Lonoke County, compared to 168 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metro area.

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

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