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:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kNc6XTZSKerv5-Uk2kgoMUXPQHPjHKsLq0fMSZMkyuw/edit?usp=sharing
Charts
Washington State is currently tracking closely with the national increase
In the past week, the state average has generally been below the national average by 2 to 4 cases/100k. During the last wave (May to July), Washington State was above the national average for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
King County has been increasing its gap from the state average
In the past week, King County has stayed below the state average by about 3 new cases/100k. This is better than a week ago, which was about 2 new cases/100k below the state average.
After a strong above-average wave (May to July) Pierce County is matching the state average
Spokane’s dataset indicates an unusual spike in the past few days
This may be a correction (note the negative value in the “new cases” chart), and refer to the county site for more detail: https://covid.srhd.org/topics/spokane-county-case-data.
Franklin, Walla walla and Benton are all above the national average by ~15 new cases per 100k
All counties ranked by trailing average case per 100k as of 7/24/2021
Here is a ranked list of all counties as of 7/24/2021. I have added the nation and 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
WACovid-Charts
Google sheet with all King County cities
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16HXKTs5ZPGFnli3FRcTALsA40CovxCQoS-JF2GrETaY/edit?usp=sharing
Subreddit with daily reports from various contributors
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusWA/
