Allegheny County's covid count up nearly 900 in 2 days

Allegheny County saw another 887 cases of covid-19 over the past two days, according to a report Monday from the county’s Department of Health.

The county reported 519 were added Sunday and another 368 on Monday, pushing the total to 61,075 cases to date.

Of those new cases, 765 were confirmed through 2,864 PCR tests conducted from Dec. 28 through Sunday. Five of the confirmed cases are more than a week old. There were 122 cases listed as probable. Health officials define a probable case as one in which a patient has a positive viral antigen test or covid symptoms with a “high-risk exposure” to someone who has been confirmed to have coronavirus.

While health officials have said weekend numbers are generally lower, there was a slight increase (35 cases) from last week’s Sunday-Monday period. Still, the county is far better than it was a month ago. Over the first 11 days of January, Allegheny County is averaging 661 cases per day, whereas the average was 875 in the first 11 days of December.

Over the Sunday-Monday period, Allegheny County posted the second highest number of new covid cases in Pennsylvania, behind only Philadelphia (1,070). The two counties are the state’s most populous.

The age breakdown of the new cases — 474 female, 413 male are:

• Ages 0-4: 16
• Ages 5-12: 30
• Ages 13-18: 45
• Ages 19-24: 107
• Ages 25-49: 323
• Ages 50-64: 203
• Ages 65 and over: 163

Officials announced three new covid-related deaths. The dates of death were listed as Saturday and Sunday, with one person in their 80s and two in their 90s. One of deaths was associated with a long-term care facility.

Since the pandemic began 10 months ago, the county’s health department reported a total of 1,089 deaths related to covid-19. The state’s health department puts Allegheny County’s death total at 1,192, a discrepancy attributed to different reporting methods.

According to the state’s covid-19 dashboard, there are currently 545 county residents hospitalized with the virus, 166 of them in the intensive care unit and 72 on respirators. As with the cases, Allegheny County has seen a drop in covid hospitalizations in the past month. Over the first 11 days of January, the county has seen an average of 626 people hospitalized, a 13% decline from the first 11 days of December (722).

As of Jan. 10, state officials report that 26,172 doses of covid-19 vaccines — including both Pfizer and Moderna — have been administered in Allegheny County. It is, by far, the largest number of inoculations in the state.

To date, Allegheny County has registered a total of 61,075 cases of coronavirus, with 49,213 of those confirmed through PCR tests. There have been 314,286 individuals who have tested negative for the virus.