Special Report

This Is the County in the Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC Metro Area With the Most COVID-19

Samuel Stebbins

Published: November 30, 2021 4:00 am

Despite the ongoing vaccination effort, new daily cases of COVID-19 are beginning to rise once again in parts of the United States. To date, there have been 47,702,000 reported cases of the virus nationwide — and that number is growing every day.

In the Augusta-Richmond County metropolitan area, which covers parts of Georgia and South Carolina, a total of 101,040 COVID-19 cases have been reported to date. Adjusted for population, there have been 17,002 reported infections for every 100,000 people in the area — above the national rate of 14,580 cases per 100,000 people.

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

The broader Augusta metro area comprises seven counties or county equivalents, which can include independent cities — and of them, Richmond County has the most COVID-19 cases per capita. So far, there have been a total of 35,477 infections in Richmond County, or 17,610 for every 100,000 people.

Not only does Richmond County have the most COVID-19 infections per capita in the Augusta 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 362 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people in Richmond County, compared to 277 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 across the entire Augusta-Richmond County metro area.

All COVID-19 data used in this story are current as of Nov. 26, 2021.

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