28K cases this week; child rates highest in 4 months

There have been 27,997 additional coronavirus cases accumulated in the past seven days, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The seven-day moving average of newly reported cases was 4,000 cases per day, up 28.5% from a week ago, and triple the rate recorded 30 days ago.

Infection rates have been rising quickly — and public health officials warn that the official numbers are missing the large number of people using at-home tests, the results of which don’t get entered into official tracking systems.

Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed only four Pennsylvania counties as being in high impact areas. Thursday’s report shows 23 of the state’s 67 counties being highly impacted by COVID, including Lehigh and Northampton counties, as well as four of the six neighboring counties. Berks and Schuylkill are listed as experiencing medium impact from the continuing pandemic.

People in high impact areas are advised to mask in public indoor spaces and to limit prolonged proximity to others if they or family members have conditions making them more susceptible to serious disease.

The CDC community level measure uses several metrics to gauge how cases and hospitalizations are affecting an area.

Going by disease transmission alone, 63 out of 67 counties — with 98.9% of the state’s population — have high transmission levels, while the other four counties have “substantial” virus transmission.

To date, there have been 2.88 million infections statewide.

Deaths

There were 84 additional deaths reported in the past week. The seven-day moving average of deaths per day is 12 compared with 11.6 a week ago, an increase of 3.7% in the past seven days. Pennsylvania has recorded 44,898 deaths since March 2020.

Child cases

The Pennsylvania Health Department publishes a weekly summary of coronavirus infections in pre-school and school-age children. A Morning Call comparison of the schoolage rates with the adult rates for the same period show a recent surge in childhood infections.

Most of the year has seen lower rates of disease in children than adults in Lehigh and Northampton counties. That changed dramatically within the past three weeks when the Lehigh Valley’s children were reporting infections at three times the rate of adults.

The imbalance has diminished in the two subsequent reports, both released at The Morning Call’s request Friday morning. The latest numbers show local children being infected 1.37 times more than adults. Lehigh County is skewed higher towards childhood infections because its adult rate is about a third lower than Northampton County’s.

Hospitalizations

There have been an average of 1,045 COVID-positive patients in the state’s hospitals during the past seven days, with and average of 110 in intensive care beds and 45 on ventilators.

Those numbers are up 25% in the past week, and have increased 133% in the last 30 days.

Hospitals in Lehigh and

Northampton counties have seen rates increase 21% in the past week, and 151% over the last 30 days. There were 110 COVID-positive patients in local hospitals Wednesday — the latest data available — with 9 in ICUs and 6 on ventilators.

Vaccinations

The latest data from the CDC show:

There are 8.81 million fully vaccinated people in Pennsylvania, accounting for 68.8% of the population. An additional 2.1 million people are in need of their follow-up shot. In total, 23.28 million shots have been put into the arms of 10.91 million people, or 85.2% of the state’s residents.

Included in those statewide numbers are 479,560 Lehigh Valley residents who are fully vaccinated, accounting for 71.1% of the local population. In total, 557,587 locals have received 1,21 million shots in the arm, accounting for 82.7% of the Valley’s population.

An average of 16,234 vaccinations are being administered to Pennsylvania residents each day, according to CDC data. Of those, 2,783 are first doses. The number of total vaccinations per day is up 17.8% over the last 30 days. The number of first doses being given per day is down 31.4% over the last 30 days.

Lehigh Valley

Cases: 1,855 additional case reports in the past week, with 918 in Lehigh County, 937 in Northampton County. That brings the total to 175,126.

Deaths: 10 new deaths this week (seven in Lehigh County, and three in Northampton County). That brings the total to 2,353 (1,253 in Lehigh, and 1,100 in Northampton).