Special Report

This Is the County in the Rapid City, SD Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: May 17, 2022 4:15 am

There have been 81,417,100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States to date – and that number continues to grow.

In the Rapid City metropolitan area, located in South Dakota, a total of 41,979 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. Adjusted for population, there have been 28,893 confirmed infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 24,885 cases per 100,000 people.

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

The broader Rapid City metro area comprises three counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Pennington County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 32,903 confirmed infections in Pennington County, or 30,105 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Pennington County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Rapid City 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 314 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Pennington County, compared to 298 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Rapid City metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of May 13, 2022.

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