New infections fall as rural Covid-19 death toll hits 60,000

New coronavirus infection rate, Jan. 10-16
Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Total rural Covid-19 deaths surpassed 60,000 last week, Jan. 10-16, accounting for 15.6 percent of all pandemic deaths in the U.S.; rural America has only about 14% of the nation's population. Though new rural infections over Jan. 10-16 decreased from the week before, rural deaths increased 1%. 

"There were 187,969 new coronavirus infections last week in rural counties, a decline of 19% from the previous week’s record level of about 232,000," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "The decline in new cases of Covid-19 was broad-based, with the new-infection rates in rural counties dropping by at least 10 cases per 100,000 in 70% of nonmetro counties. Only 24% of rural counties had an increase of at least 10 new cases per 100,000."

"The number of counties with very high rates of new cases (a daily average of more than 500 new cases per 100,000 for the week) declined last week. But counties in the red zone (100 or more new daily cases per 100,000 in a week) remained high," Murphy and Marema report. Nine of every 10 rural counties in the red zone last week.

"In rural areas, counties with very high infection rates (shown in black in the map) fell by a third to 505. Metro counties with very high infection rates (shown in gray) also fell by about a third to 336." Click here for more data and analysis from the Yonder, including an interactive map with county-level data.