Harrisburg, PA - Today, the Pennsylvania Department of Health provided its weekly COVID-19 update and information about a new tool designed to help people make decisions based on the COVID-19 level in their community.
“This week’s COVID-19 update continues to show that trends in Pennsylvania are moving in the right direction,” Acting Health Secretary Keara Klinepeter said. “Case counts are at their lowest since last August, hospital admissions due to COVID-19 are falling, and mortality rates are declining.”
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed some recommendations and launched the “COVID-19 Community Levels” tool to help people better understand the level of COVID-19 in their community so they can make informed decisions in their daily life.
“Today, the Department of Health is adding links throughout our COVID-19 webpages to take users directly to the CDC tool where they can search and find information for their county and recommendations to prevent spreading the virus,” Klinepeter said. “With continued personal vigilance, including getting up to date on vaccinations, we can get through this.”
Find the CDC’s community levels and prevention recommendations by county here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/covid-by-county.html.
Weekly Update
Pennsylvania continues to make critical strides in getting eligible residents vaccinated by working closely with vaccine providers, grassroots organizations, and relevant stakeholders to ensure all Pennsylvanians have access to the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the CDC, as of Monday, Feb. 28, 76.5% of Pennsylvanians age 18 and older are fully vaccinated. This percentage reflects all 67 counties in Pennsylvania.
If you or your loved ones are not yet vaccinated, now is the time to get fully vaccinated, get boosted and get children ages 5–18 vaccinated. Visit vaccines.gov to find a vaccine provider near you to schedule your vaccine appointment.
This week, the Department of Health analyzed the following vaccine data within its 66-county vaccine jurisdiction; Philadelphia is a separate vaccine jurisdiction:
72,750 vaccine doses were administered in the past week, including:
30,365 booster doses administered in the past week.
7,144 pediatric doses administered in the past week.
Here is a statewide summary of COVID-19 trends over the past 7 days Monday, Feb. 21 –Sunday, Feb. 27:
The daily average number of cases was 1,565.
The CDC ranks Pennsylvania 27th in excess deaths related to COVID-19.
The number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday, Feb. 28 was 27 percent lower than on Feb. 21. The percent of available adult ICU beds rose to 23.5% and available pediatric ICU beds rose to 12.9%.
Approximately 7.5% of all staffed adult ICU beds are COVID-19 patients.
24.0% of all ventilators statewide are in use.
The Department of Health continues to provide the public with extensive and frequently updated data on both the COVID-19 dashboard and the vaccine dashboard. Both dashboards provide an interactive experience for the user to review statewide and local-level data updated daily.
The department also provides a dashboard showing COVID-19 data for skilled nursing homes including case counts, deaths and vaccination status for residents and staff.
For more information on the Department of Health’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, visit here.
To stay informed about the Wolf Administration’s vaccination efforts, the latest federal vaccine news, and answers to pressing vaccine questions, visit the Unite Against COVID Weekly Update.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As Pennsylvania moves into the next phase of the pandemic, the Department of Health will shift to a monthly news release on COVID-19 trends on the first Wednesday of the month. Data will continue to be available in the various dashboards online at: https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Coronavirus.aspx.
MEDIA CONTACT: Mark O'Neill - ra-dhpressoffice@pa.gov
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