Allegheny County & Pennsylvania #covid hospitalization & variants thread for 2022-05-18

Allegheny County

Allegheny reports 3387 new cases over 7 days
Hospitalizations are +7 to 156
ICUs are -2 to 15 (71% full)
7 day avg rises to 484 cases/day
Transmission risk: High
CDC Community level: Medium

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania reports 27379 new cases over 7 days
Hospitalizations are +42 to 1132
ICUs are +15 to 128 (78% full)
7 day avg rises to 3832 cases/day
Transmission risk: High

Vaccinations

Allegheny County daily vaccines move to 358 1st+2nd doses, 221 booster doses/day (5 day lagged 7 day avg)

Hospitalizations

PA counties with full ICU beds due to covid: None

PA-wide hospital census: Using 16888 med/surg beds, 283 more than last week, 244 more than 2 weeks ago.

Commentary

Hospitalizations and ICU use continue slow rise. Statewide hospitalizations are about half what they were in previous waves at similar case levels, but are still rising; our vaccination rates are helping but we could still be doing quite a bit better.

New York has flattened again after their BA.2.12.1-fueled rise; Philadelphia County has also, which is possibly contributing to some slowdown in PA-wide cases. Western PA likely doesn't have quite the same levels of 2.12.1 yet; it's just a few days too early to try to interpret that possible-slowing in cases here.

It remains excellent weather to try to use the outdoors as a source of ventilation to reduce spread. At least until it hits 90 this weekend.