Special Report

This Is the County in the Richmond, VA Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: October 26, 2021 3:15 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 Richmond metropolitan area, located in Virginia, a total of 144,051 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 11,241 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — below the national rate of 13,736 cases per 100,000 people.

Even though Richmond has fewer COVID-19 infections per capita than the national average, there are parts of the metro area where this is not the case.

The broader Richmond metro area comprises 17 counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, the city of Hopewell has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 3,665 infections in the city of Hopewell, or 16,356 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Hopewell have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Richmond 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 384 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in the city of Hopewell, compared to 185 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Richmond metro area.

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

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