Pennsylvania reports nearly 13K more covid cases, 186 deaths in 2 days

The state added 12,844 more covid-19 cases over the past two days, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported Monday.

Health officials reported 7,506 of those cases Sunday and another 5,338 cases on Monday. Of the newest reported cases, 11,522 were confirmed through PCR tests, while 1,322 were listed as probable.

The state’s latest Sunday-Monday case report was over 65% more than one week ago (7,805). Yet, despite the strong increase, officials cautioned that Monday’s case count was “low as a result of technical maintenance to the data server on Sunday.”

In a bit of positive news, health officials announced Monday the statewide percent positivity has declined to 14.4% from 15% the prior week. Officials said every county in the state still has a concerning percent positivity above 5%, including 14 counties with percent positivity at or above 20%, seven counties less than the week before.

“Although I am grateful to see our statewide percent positivity decrease for yet another week in a row, we still have more work to do to keep our friends and loved ones safe from further spread across our communities,” Gov. Tom Wolf said in a news release Monday.

Health officials announced 186 more covid-related deaths Monday — saying 103 were added Sunday, 83 on Monday. Those deaths contribute to a seven-day reporting record of 1,492 covid deaths.

Of the newly reported deaths, 100 occurred in January, 85 in December and one in November.

Officials report a total of 17,853 Pennsylvanians have died of covid.

In the state’s 1,495 nursing and personal care homes, officials report there have been 57,376 resident cases of covid and 10,567 cases among employees.

Through Jan. 10, officials report 285,671 doses of the vaccines — both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s — have been administered in the state. Officials said that total does not include vaccines administered through CVS as part of the Federal Pharmacy Partnership.

Over the Sunday-Monday period, Philadelphia posted the most new covid cases (1,070) in Pennsylvania, followed by Allegheny (887), Montgomery (838), Lancaster (651) and York (604).

According to the state’s covid-19 dashboard, there are currently 5,232 state residents hospitalized with the virus, 1,070 of them in the intensive care unit and 663 on respirators. Over the past week, the state has averaged 5,415 covid-related hospitalizations per day, a 5.7% decline from the previous week.

Since the pandemic began 10 months ago, Pennsylvania has registered a total of 726,154 cases of coronavirus, 644,457 of those have been confirmed through PCR tests. A total of 3,392,426 individuals have tested negative.