Berks County got good news on the COVID-19 front this week.
The state’s weekly update of COVID data shows decreases for the county in many areas, including cases, deaths and the case rate.
Cases
The county’s weekly case count took a steep dive, hitting the lowest total in more than two months.
According to Wednesday’s update of the state Department of Health’s COVID dashboard, Berks had 362 new cases and reinfections. That’s down 101 from the 463 reported last week.
The county’s case counts have dropped significantly the past four weeks after hitting a four-month high of 776 in data reported Jan. 4.
The county’s COVID cases per 100,000 residents were down from data reported last week. The state’s Early Warning Monitoring Dashboard showed that between Jan. 25 and Jan. 31 the county had a case rate of 54 per 100,000 people. Last week the rate was 63 per 100,000 people.
The positivity rate of 17.3% in Berks was down slightly, coming in 2 points lower than the rate of 19.3% reported last week.
Overall, Berks has had 125,483 COVID cases during the pandemic.
Statewide, this week’s data showed 60 COVID cases per 100,000 people and a positivity rate of 12.5%. Both were down slightly from data reported the previous week.
There have been 3,479,345 COVID cases in the state during the pandemic, with 10,269 new cases and reinfections added in Wednesday’s data update.
Deaths
The state, which reports the number of Berks residents to die no matter where the deaths take place, reported this week that a total of 1,756 county residents have died of COVID. That’s an increase of three from data reported last week.
The three deaths were a steep drop from the 12 reported last week, which was the highest weekly total for the county since the state started reporting weekly data on May 11.
Statewide, a total of 49,791 people have died of COVID, an increase of 158 from data reported last week.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalizations of COVID patients in Berks saw a drop this week.
According to state data released Wednesday, there were 49 hospitalized patients in the county. That’s down nine from the previous week.
Of the hospitalized patients in this week’s data, four were in intensive care and six were on ventilators. The number of intensive care patients was up one from data reported last week, while the number on ventilators was the same as last week.
Statewide there were 1,214 COVID patients hospitalized, down 44 from the number reported last week.
Vaccinations
• The number of fully vaccinated individuals in Berks was 260,569, an increase of 156.
• The number of individuals to receive a bivalent booster dose since Sept. 2 is 53,929, an increase of 685.
Source: Berkshire mont
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