Pa. case rate up for 2nd day

The state Health Department reported 3,119 additional coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the highest one-day total in nearly three weeks.

The seven-day moving average of newly reported cases was 2,512, up 2% from 2,472 a week ago, and was the second consecutive day the rate has risen. It is still down more than 25% from where it was a month ago.

To date, there have been 970,717 infections statewide since the start of the pandemic.

Northampton and Monroe counties rank just behind Clearfield as having the most cases per day per 100,000 residents. Clearfield averages 33.5 cases per day, per 100,000 people, while Northampton comes in at 32.4 and Monroe, 31.4. Lehigh County is eighth on the list, at 25.3.

While those rates are about one-third their peak from mid-December, they are still almost 10 times as high as early September. Public health officials warn that such a relatively high “trough” in the curve could be a springboard for another surge if one of the more transmissible coronavirus variants takes hold in the area before a substantial portion of the population is immunized.

Pennsylvania is working to get vaccinations administered as quickly as vaccines are delivered. Health Department COVID adviser Lindsey Mauldin said in a news briefing Tuesday that 92% of the first doses delivered last week to the 66 counties under the department’s purview have been administered. Including Philadelphia, which has its own vaccine shipments and reporting requirements, there have been more than 100,000 vaccinations administered each day for five consecutive days.

Mauldin said the state’s goal is to get everyone in group 1A scheduled for their vaccination appointments by the end of March, though many of those appointments won’t take place until next month.

She admitted that, since restaurant and hospitality workers are not in group 1A, they might be left temporarily vulnerable when restrictions for restaurants and indoor events are eased as of April 4. She said that they are confident that groups 1B and 1C will get vaccinated faster than 1A as the supply of vaccines increases.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention usually publishes its allocation totals on Tuesdays, but the web pages for the Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer vaccine allocations were not updated.

More than 1.4 million Pennsylvanians are fully immunized against COVID-19, according to the state’s and Philadelphia’s dashboards. More than 4.2 million vaccinations have been administered to 2.8 million people, not including those who have gotten a shot from a federal agency or through a separate program that provides vaccinations to nursing home residents and staff.

More than 90,000 Lehigh Valley residents — 16.5% of the eligible population — are fully immunized. Another 64,000 locals have received their first dose. Close to 245,000 shots have been put into 155,000 arms in the two counties.

The state reported 65 deaths. The seven-day moving average of deaths per day is 37, compared with 42 a week ago.

There were 1,489 people hospitalized as of midday Tuesday, compared with 1,450 Monday and 1,433 on Sunday. Of those, 163 were on ventilators, and 280 were intensive care patients. Local health care systems reported 112 COVID-19 patients, compared with 104 on Monday, with 23 people in intensive care units, and 11 of those on ventilators.

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