2021-12-13
After adding over 700,000 new cases throughout the last week, the US now has more than 48.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. There have been more than 780,000 COVID-19-related deaths — the highest death toll of any country.
New cases continue to rise at a faster rate. In the past week, there were an average of 1,508.3 daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 Americans — an increase from the week prior, when there were an average of 0.8 daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people.
While COVID-19 has spread to nearly every part of the country, cities continue to be the sites of major outbreaks. Experts agree that the virus is more likely to spread in group settings where large numbers of people routinely have close contact with one another, such as colleges, nursing homes, bars, and restaurants. Metropolitan areas with a high degree of connectivity between different neighborhoods and a large population may be particularly at-risk.
The San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA, metro area consists of Alameda County, Contra Costa County, San Francisco County, and two other counties. In the past week, there were an average of 0.3 new coronavirus cases every day per 100,000 San Francisco residents, less than the national figure. The metro area’s average daily case growth in the most recent week is essentially unchanged from the week prior, when there were an average of 0.1 daily new cases per 100,000 San Francisco residents.
The spread of coronavirus depends on a variety of factors and can vary even between neighboring counties. Within the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metro area, COVID-19 is growing the slowest in San Francisco County. There were an average of 661.2 new cases per day per 100,000 residents in San Francisco County during the past week, the least of the five counties in San Francisco with available data.
Case growth in the San Francisco metro area is relatively uniform at the county level. In Contra Costa County, for example, there were an average of 936.5 new cases per day per 100,000 residents in the past week — the most of any county in San Francisco yet relatively in line with the case growth rate in San Francisco County.
Just as San Francisco County has the slowest case growth in the San Francisco area, it also has the lowest incidence of cases overall. As of December 9, there were a total of 6,566.9 confirmed cases per 100,000 residents in San Francisco County, the fewest of the five counties in the metro area. For comparison, the US has so far reported 15,085.6 cases per 100,000 Americans nationwide.
