Special Report

This Is the County in the Birmingham-Hoover, AL Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: October 26, 2021 5:30 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 Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area, located in Alabama, a total of 200,035 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 17,439 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 Birmingham-Hoover is being driven by a high concentration of the virus in one area in particular.

The broader Birmingham metro area comprises seven counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Bibb County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 4,236 infections in Bibb County, or 18,804 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Bibb County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Birmingham 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 382 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Bibb County, compared to 296 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Birmingham-Hoover metro area.

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

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