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County sees highest number of new COVID cases in months

A day after Gov. Tom Wolf announced that mask requirements could be eliminated if the state reaches a vaccination rate of 70 percent, Warren County had its highest number of new cases in months.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 38 new cases of COVID-19 in Warren County on Wednesday.

That is the largest single-day report since Jan. 5 when there were 50 new cases.

There were 33 cases reported on Jan. 8 and 36 on Jan. 9.

Those dates were on the down-side of a surge that saw a high of 78 new cases on Dec. 20. That surge started in late November and tailed off in late January.

The Jan. 30 report indicated 37 new cases and on April 15, there were 21 new cases. Those dates, like Wednesday’s report, were surrounded by days with much lower reports.

In all of April, there were 223 new cases. There were 119 new cases in March and 139 in February.

So far in May, there have been 53.

According the department, there have been a total of 2,554 cases in Warren County, with 1,971 confirmed cases, and 583 probables.

State-wide, there have been 981,441 confirmed cases and 185,251 probables.

In the county, 6.5 percent of the population has contracted COVID-19 and there have been 102 deaths attributed to the virus.

The number of COVID-positive patients (six) at Warren General Hospital is as high as it has been since early February, according to the department. None of those patients were on respirators nor in intensive care.

VACCINATIONS

The number of fully vaccinated county residents continues to rise. As of Thursday’s statistics, there had been 8,823 residents fully vaccinated. That is only about 22.5 percent of the county population.

The number of people receiving first doses is lagging behind.

As of Thursday, there were 5,039 people who were partially vaccinated. If all of those people go on to get their second doses, that would bring the county’s vaccination rate to about 35 percent.

There are about 8,000 county residents under the age of 18, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Removing those gives a vaccination rate of about 44.5 percent for all adults in Warren County – far short of Gov. Tom Wolf’s target of 70 percent of adults state-wide to remove mask requirements.

The state-wide vaccination rate is much closer to that target.

There are almost 13 million people in the state – about 9.35 million age 18 and over.

According to the department, 3.65 million (about 39 percent) are fully vaccinated and another 1.85 million (about 20 percent) have received first doses.

A state vaccination rate of 59 percent is about 1 million people short of the target.

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