Special Report

This Is the County in the Fort Smith, AR-OK Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: October 26, 2021 4:45 am

Following a months long surge driven by the delta variant, new daily cases of COVID-19 are falling once again in the United States. To date, there have been 44,940,700 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Fort Smith metropolitan area, which covers parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma, a total of 47,461 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 16,878 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 13,736 cases per 100,000 people.

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

The broader Fort Smith metro area comprises four counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Sebastian County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 22,186 infections in Sebastian County, or 17,406 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Sebastian County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Fort Smith 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 293 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Sebastian County, compared to 254 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Fort Smith metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Oct. 22, 2021.

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