Pandemic has cooled in rural America, but its new-case rate is still twice that of metro counties; death rate is 80% higher

Rural and urban infection rates, Feb. 20-26 (Daily Yonder map; for interactive version, click here.)

The rate of new coronavirus cases in rural counties dropped for the fifth straight week Feb 20-26 and is 80 percent below the peak of the recent surge, Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder.

However, "Infections in metropolitan counties have dropped even more rapidly," Marema reports. "New metro cases fell by a third last week and have declined over 90% since their peak in mid-January. . . . The current rural infection rate is twice that of metropolitan areas," Marema reports. "A similar disparity has become more pronounced in recent weeks in the death rates of rural and metropolitan counties."

In the Feb. 20-26 week, "The metro rate improved by 21% while the rural rate improved by about 5%," Marema explains. "Metro America’s faster improvement means that the Covid-related death rate is now about 80% higher in rural areas than in metropolitan ones. The higher rural death rate is a long-term trend. Over the past 20 months, the rural death rate has been higher than the metro rate for all but five weeks. Rural (nonmetropolitan) counties represent only 14% of the U.S. population but account for about 23% of the nation’s Covid-related deaths."

There were exceptions to the national trend, Marema notes: "States where the rural infection rate worsened were Wyoming (71% increase), South Dakota (44% increase) and Alaska (20%)." For more detailed information form the Yonder, including interactive graphs and tables, click here.