COVID-19 Pennsylvania Update

January 7, 2022

According to the CDC, as of Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021, 74.1% of Pennsylvanians aged 18 and older were fully vaccinated. This percentage reflects all 67 counties in Pennsylvania.

In the 66-county DoH vaccine jurisdiction (Philadelphia is a separate vaccine jurisdiction), 269,488 vaccine doses were administered in the last week of December, including 131,793 booster doses and 12,270 pediatric doses

That number is a 3.8% decrease in vaccines administered from previous week, and a decrease of more than 33.6% from the week ending December 20, possibly due to the Christmas/New Year holiday.

During the month of December, a record 299,504 cases were recorded in Pennsylvania.

A statewide summary of COVID-19 trends for the seven days from Dec. 27 –Sunday, Jan. 2 showed:

  • The daily average number of new cases was 22,635, almost three times the number Dec. 13-19.  The nine highest one-day increases in cases of the pandemic were the last nine days of 2021.
  • The number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday, Jan. 3 was 22.6 percent higher than on Dec. 27. The percent of available adult and pediatric ICU beds in the state fell to 16% and 11%, respectively.
  • Approximately 28% of all staffed adult ICU beds were COVID-19 patients.
  • There were 727 deaths attributed to COVID-19 identified in the PA death registry the last seven days of 2021 Total PA deaths from COVID-19 were 37,366.

 

In the first week of January, with 138,422 cases so far, January 2022 already has the sixth-most cases in a single month since the pandemic began in 2020.

Pennsylvania hospitals were caring for 6,680 patients with COVID-19 on Friday, another daily record and about 330 more than last winter’s peak.

Gov. Tom Wolf on Friday announced support measures for hospitals, including sending state health department and emergency management staff to some hospitals, and launching “regional support sites” to accept patients from overloaded hospitals. The regional sites won’t be open until early February.

For the week, Pennsylvania’s rate of positive COVID-19 tests was 34.1%, another all-time high and up from 25% during the previous week.  Pennsylvania in the seven day period registered 56,000 more confirmed COVID-19 infections than during the previous week.

While the seven-day average of new infections rose by 68% in one week, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 rose only 26%.  1,071 patients with COVID-19 were in intensive care units on January 7, up from less than 600 in early November. Pennsylvania’s all-time pandemic high was 1,264 on Dec. 15, 2020.  On Friday, 648 people with COVID-19 were on ventilators, about double the number from mid-November. The pandemic peak of 769 came on Dec. 26, 2020.

The Department of Health provides updated data on both the COVID-19 dashboard and the vaccine dashboard. The department also provides a dashboard showing COVID-19 data for skilled nursing homes including case counts, deaths and vaccination status for residents and staff.  For more information on the Department of Health’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, visit here.