South remains primary hotbed of rural coronavirus infections; county-level data available

Coronavirus infections by county, Aug. 15-22.
Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

As new covid-19 cases in rural counties have fallen for the third week in a row, the South remained a rural hotbed of infections.

"While case numbers are down in rural counties, the number of rural counties that are in the 'red zone' dropped by only four from August 15 to August 22. This week, 734 rural counties were in the red zone," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "Red-zone counties are those with at least 100 new cases per 100,000 in population for a seven-day period. The definition comes from the White House Coronavirus Task Force and indicates that the pandemic is out of control in those locations."

Non-metropolitan counties saw 46,000 new infections from Aug. 15-22, a 10 percent decline of 5,800 cases from the previous week, Murphy and Marema report. Rural covid-19 deaths from Aug. 15-22 fell 3%, to 1,118.