Most of Berks County’s weekly COVID remained steady this week.
According to the state’s weekly data update on Wednesday, there were little to no changes in new cases and deaths, and only small changes in other data.
Cases
The county’s weekly case count was virtually the same as last week, when the number was the lowest it’s been since the state began reporting weekly data in early May.
According to Wednesday’s update of the state Department of Health’s COVID dashboard, Berks had 332 new cases and reinfections. That’s up one from the 331 reported last week.
The county’s case counts have dropped significantly the past seven weeks after hitting a holiday-surge peak of 776 in data reported Jan. 4.
The county’s COVID cases per 100,000 residents continued to decline. The state’s Early Warning Monitoring Dashboard showed that between Feb. 15 and 21 the county had a case rate of 45 per 100,000 people. Last week the rate was 47 per 100,000 people.
This week was the seventh straight in which the case rate decreased after peaking at 102 in data reported on Jan. 4.
The positivity rate in Berks reported this week was up slightly over last week. The rate of 15.2% was up just under a half-point from the rate of 14.8% reported last week.
Overall, Berks has had 126,501 COVID cases during the pandemic.
Statewide, this week’s data showed 56 COVID cases per 100,000 people and a positivity rate of 11.8%. Both numbers were down slightly from data reported last week.
There have been 3,512,137 COVID cases in the state during the pandemic, with 10,425 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 1,769 county residents have died of COVID. That’s an increase of four from data reported last week.
Statewide, a total of 50,168 people have died of COVID, an increase of 113 from data reported last week.
Hospitalizations
Hospitalizations of COVID patients in Berks saw a small increase this week.
According to state data released Wednesday, there were 46 hospitalized patients in the county. That’s up seven from the previous week.
Of the hospitalized patients in this week’s data, three were in intensive care and four were on ventilators. The number of patients in intensive care was up one from data reported last week, while the number on ventilators was up three.
Statewide there were 1,135 COVID patients hospitalized, down 17 from the number reported last week.
Vaccinations
• The number of fully vaccinated individuals in Berks was 261,094, an increase of 227.
• The number of individuals to receive a bivalent booster dose since Sept. 2 is 55,673, an increase of 729.
Source: Berkshire mont
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