PublicSource has been tracking COVID-19’s spread on a daily basis since March 2020. More than a year later, in an effort to direct our resources into enterprise reporting on the pandemic and other important issues, we will cover the Allegheny County Health Department’s weekly briefing on Wednesdays and update the numbers on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We may adjust as the prevalence of the coronavirus ebbs and flows. If you have questions or comments, please email PublicSource’s managing editor halle@publicsource.org.
COVID cases in Allegheny County continue to drop, with 3,850 infections recorded for the week of Jan. 30 through Feb. 5. The county reported 75 deaths in the same time period.
The decline in cases follows a drop reported last week by county and state health officials.
“I do think there is hope at the end of the tunnel here,” Pennsylvania’s Acting Health Secretary Keara Klinepeter said in a Feb. 2 briefing in Allegheny County. “But until then we do really encourage folks to continue those good public health practices, continue to reach out to one another and lift one another up.”
During the briefing, County Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen noted that daily cases in the past three weeks have dropped from 3,000 to 2,000 cases each day to about 1,000 daily cases.
“Numbers we haven’t really seen since mid-December,” Bogen said.
The county has also observed a decline in COVID detected in wastewater sampling. Of the newly reported cases, 42% were of unvaccinated individuals and 7% were reinfections.
Bogen said that community members have told her that they are less worried because the omicron variant is less deadly. Bogen said that is true on a case-by-case basis. “But when you have over 3,000 cases a day, you’re going to have a lot of people die,” Bogen said. “And that’s what we’re seeing here with the omicron surge.”
Bogen said she anticipates that children as young as six months will be eligible for shots “very soon.”
With cases dropping, Bogen said the county health department is transitioning from crisis mode to maintenance mode. The department will be focusing on protective measures like increasing vaccination as well as targeted investigations of outbreaks and cases involving higher-risk and vulnerable populations.
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