Special Report

This is the County in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 25, 2021 5:00 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 33,741,500 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metropolitan area, which covers parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, a total of 386,277 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 10,858 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 10,313 cases per 100,000 people.

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

The broader Minneapolis metro area comprises 16 counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Sherburne County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 12,082 infections in Sherburne County, or 12,959 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Sherburne County than they are across all of the Minneapolis area, however. There have been a total of 102 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Sherburne County, compared to 132 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of July 20, 2021.

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