Allegheny County & Pennsylvania #covid hospitalization & variants thread for 2022-10-19

Allegheny County

Allegheny reports 950 new cases over 7 days.
Hospitalizations are -22 to 161
ICUs are +4 to 25 (72% full)
7 day avg to 136 cases/day
Transmission risk: Substantial
CDC Community level: Med

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania reports 10843 new cases over 7 days.
Hospitalizations are +45 to 1228
ICUs are +15 to 154 (79% full)
7 day avg drops to 1536 cases/day
Transmission risk: Substantial

Vaccinations

In Allegheny County, 72% of the population has had 2 doses of OG vaccine, and 9.6% has received the updated bivalent booster (up 1.9% from last week), vs. 6% statewide.

Hospitalizations

PA counties with full ICU beds due to covid:
Bradford (2 +covid patients in ICU), Tioga (2), Lawrence (1)

PA-wide hospital census: Using 18063 med/surg beds, 201 more than last week, 438 more than 2 weeks ago.

Both influenza and RSV are on the rise across the US, which may be contributing a bit to those rising hospital numbers. RSV is already quite high; flu is modest but rising. For flu we've got a vaccine, and it remains a good time for both flu shot & getting updated covid booster.

For RSV, keeping sick kids home from daycare can help prevent spread, and filtration, masking, and handwashing help there too. (We haven't yet had the same dogma overhaul with RSV so I'm including handwashing - but handwashing helps against norovirus too, so don't stop anyway!)