Rural Covid-19 infections and death rates fell below those of urban areas during the last week of 2022

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Since early in the pandemic, rural America has had more deaths and coronavirus cases than urban areas. Not in the last full CDC reporting week of 2022, when "Covid-19 infection and death rates . . . were lower in rural counties than in metropolitan areas," reports Sarah Melotte of The Daily Yonder. "The weekly rural death rate was about 12% lower than the metropolitan death rate. . . . That's only the eighth week since August 2020 that the rural death rate has been lower than the metro rate. In 2022, it was lower on just three occasions."

Urban and rural infection rates have been more varied. "The early days of the pandemic saw urban areas with very high rates compared to rural areas because the epicenter of infections was the New York metropolitan area," Melotte writes. "Since those early months, new outbreaks generally led initially to higher metropolitan rates which later rolled into higher rates for rural areas."

Melotte compares the numbers: There were 43,499 new rural cases, "27% fewer infections than the previous week. The rural infection rate was 94.4 infections per 100,000 residents, 16,184 fewer infections than the previous week. . . . There were 342,545 new cases last week in metropolitan counties, where the infection rate was 121.4 cases per 100,000 residents. Urban infections dropped by 22%, 97,283 fewer infections than the previous week." A comparison of rural and urban deaths shows a greater percentage drop in rural deaths. "During the week of August 8, 2020, the rural death rate exceeded the urban rate for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic and it remained that way for all but a handful of weeks."