Here are charts for Washington State counties. These charts rely on the New York Times’ published data on COVID-19 in the United States. I am primarily use their county-level data set together with population estimates (Wikipedia reports on US Census data from 2019).
I have produced charts of new cases of COVID-19 as
- 7-day trailing averages
- scaled to cases per 100k.
Google sheets link
All of my charts and tables are shared in a public Google sheets document:
Charts
Washington State
The country appears to have dropped in cases since July. The past week shows a flat line for the US. The state not only remains below average, but has not flattened out in the past week. Instead, it is pushing down further below average to arrive at 6.53 average cases per 100k (which the chart compares to USA’s: 12.76).
King County
A visual inspection King county’s chart could be seen as a downward trend in the past week or two. However, the state average is coming close. To date, King County’s trailing average per 100k is 5.77. So, instead of holding a comfortable distance from the state average, King County is arguably equivalent.
Whitman and Adams County peaking at 10x the state average
Two counties stand out with dramatic increases. As of August 29th, Whitman County averages 71.3 cases per 100k. Adams County averages 60 cases per 100k. The state average is far below, with 6.5 cases per 100k, which puts these two counties at about 10 times the average for that week.
Grant past its peak, but still at 31 average cases per 100k
Grant county is also high above the average for the state. The past few weeks show that it has improved its position against the state average. However, it remains high to date with 31 average cases per 100k.
Chelan, Douglas, Walla Walla, Franklin, Okanogan, Benton, Yakima showing improvement
Despite having the next highest averages, these seven counties all show a trending towards the state average. For now, they remain a little above-average.
All counties ranked by trailing average case per 100k as of 8/29/2020
Here is a ranked list of all counties as of 8/29/2020. I have added Washington State as a whole to help contextualize the numbers.
Notes
I chose trailing averages and scaled to population (“per 100k”) to help readers identify how COVID-19 is trending in each chart and to allow readers to make fairly direct comparisons county-to-county.
These charts compare each county against the entire state. This allows us to say whether or not a county has generally been doing better or worse than the rest of the state. I am using the trailing averages and trend line comparison to mitigate the way that testing patterns have changed since the early months.
I have refrained from speculation about the reasons for each county’s performance in this post and concentrated on simple language: above vs below average and a month to month comparison.
Links
Google sheet of WA counties
Google sheet with all King County cities
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16HXKTs5ZPGFnli3FRcTALsA40CovxCQoS-JF2GrETaY/edit?usp=sharing
