Special Report

This is the County in the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: July 25, 2021 3:45 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 Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metropolitan area, located in Arkansas, a total of 81,782 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 11,134 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 Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway is being driven by a high concentration of the virus in one area in particular.

The broader Little Rock metro area comprises six counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Faulkner County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 13,875 infections in Faulkner County, or 11,334 for every 100,000 people.

A relatively high infection rate does not necessarily mean COVID-19 related fatalities per capita are higher in Faulkner County than they are across all of the Little Rock area, however. There have been a total of 137 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Faulkner County, compared to 165 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metro area.

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

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