21,781 cases reported for week

Lehigh Valley hospitalizations jump 40%

The Pennsylvania Department of Health published its weekly update of data on the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting 21,781 additional infections of the last seven days, an average of 3,112 per day. That calculates to a 46% increase in a week, and more than triple the average of 862 daily cases recorded a month ago.

Despite the continuing rise in case counts, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Level tool still lists 56 of the state’s 67 counties as being in the low impact group.

Those counties contain about 94% of the state’s roughly 13 million residents. The tool assesses the impact of the caseload on an area’s health care infrastructure as well as the raw number of active infections.

Four counties — Bradford, Montour, Sullivan and Susquehanna — with a combined population of about 125,000 are classified as being in the high impact category.

Those counties are experiencing test positivity up to 19% and hospital admissions at a rate of more than 30 patients per 100,000 population.

Seven counties, including Schuylkill, with a total population of about 605,000 people are in the medium impact category, with hospital admissions at 10-15 per 100,000 people and test positivity rates generally above 10%.

Hospitalizations

The Health Department reports 907 COVID patients in the state’s hospitals, with 96 in intensive care beds, and 36 on ventilators. Hospitalizations have risen 18% in the past week, and have nearly doubled over the last 30 days.

Those numbers include 88 COVID patients in hospitals in the Lehigh Valley, with nine in intensive care and eight on ventilators. Local hospitalizations have jumped 40% in the past week.

Deaths

There were 81 additional deaths reported in the past week. The seven-day moving average of deaths per day is 11.6, compared with 13.1 a week ago, a decrease of 12% in the last seven days. Pennsylvania has recorded 44,814 deaths since March 2020.

Vaccinations

The latest data from the CDC shows there are 8.79 million fully vaccinated people in Pennsylvania, accounting for 68.6% of the population.

An additional 2.1 million people are in need of their follow-up shot to be considered fully vaccinated. In total, 23.16 million shots have been put into the arms of 10.89 million people, or 85.1% of the state’s residents.

Included in those statewide numbers are 478,745 Lehigh Valley residents who are fully vaccinated, accounting for 71% of the local population. In total, 556,712 locals have received 1.2 million shots in the arm, accounting for 82.5% of the Valley’s population.

An average of 17,080 vaccinations are being administered to Pennsylvania residents each day, according to CDC data. Of those, 2,968 are first doses. The number of total vaccinations per day is up 52% over the last 30 days. The number of first doses being given per day is down 13.4% over the last 30 days.

Lehigh Valley

Cases: 1,518 additional case reports this week, with 763 in Lehigh County and 755 in Northampton County. That brings the total to 173,271.

Deaths: In the last seven days, eight deaths were reported, four in each county. That brings the total to 2,343 (1,246 in Lehigh, 1,097 in Northampton).