• Allegheny County’s weekly virus case count falls.

Officials have released the first tallies of people who developed COVID-19 after being vaccinated as cases continue to rise and state leaders emphasize people should not hesitate to get the shots.

Nationwide,5,800 people became infected with the virus that causes

COVID-19 out of more than 66 million people who have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 0.008% of those who have received two shots of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Serious illness among vaccinated Americans is even more rare, with fewer than 400 who were hospitalized and 74 who died. As with the flu, people who get COVID-19 after being vaccinated are more likely to have a milder illness than unvaccinated people, the CDC has said.

In Allegheny County, health department director Dr. Debra Bogen

said this week she is aware of 109 people who developed COVID-19 despite being vaccinated. These so-called breakthrough cases occurred out of a total of 213,000 people vaccinated or about 0.05% of the fully vaccinated population.

Some 2.6 million Pennsylvanians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and the state Department of Health said 331 people tested positivefor the new coronavirus after being inoculated, which is just 0.013% of the fullyvaccinated population.

No vaccine is 100% effective, doctors said, and the more people who get vaccinated, the lower the chances of mutant virus strains developing, including ones that may be more virulent than existing strains.

A growing number of unfilled appointments and low uptakeamong nursing home workers are early signs that vaccine hesitancy is becoming an issue in Pennsylvania,

prompting state officials to sound the alarm Friday and urge residents to get their COVID-19 shots as quickly as possible.

After months of demand outstripping supply, vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are more readily available, and the Wolf administration said the challenge now is to assuage the concerns of people who are reluctant to get the vaccine.

Gov. Tom Wolf and state health officials on Friday toured a community vaccination clinic in Hershey that had openings. In nearby Lebanon County, a mass vaccination clinic reported hundreds of available slots, something that might have been unthinkable weeks ago when providers were swamped with requests but didn’t have enough doses to give out.

“The appointment availability does give us cause for concern because it’s indicative of hesitancy, which really is the challenge to come,” said Alison Beam, the state’s acting health secretary, who joined Mr. Wolf at a news conference.

She said the fact that nearly half of Pennsylvania’s nursing home workers have declined the vaccine is further evidence of “how far we have to go and how much of a challenge overcoming this vaccine hesitancy will be in the near future.”

The Allegheny County Health Department reported 491 new cases of COVID-19 Friday, a total that includes 30 case results that were delayed from March.

Three new deaths from the disease were reported in March and April with patient ages ranging from their 50s to their 80s. But the number of new cases in Allegheny County fell during the week ending Thursday, down to 2,039 from 2,195 a week ago, and so did the average number of hospitalizations for the disease, which declined by 156.

The COVID-19 testing positivity rate in Allegheny County also fell during the week to 8.7% from 9.5% a week ago, according to the state Health Department.

Allegheny County was moving in the opposite direction from the state overall, where the number of new cases for the week ending Thursday rose by 441 while the testing positivity rate was 9.6%, according to the state Health Department.

The state reported 5,650 new COVID-19 cases Friday, bringing the statewide total since the outbreak began to nearly 1.1 million. There were also 56 new deaths attributed to the disease, bringing the total number of deaths to date to 25,622.

The new cases bring the total number of COVID-19 cases to 93,279 in Allegheny County since the outbreak of the epidemic and the total number of deaths to 1,831, according to the county health department.