COVID-19 case totals remain stubbornly stable in Erie County, though few get seriously ill

David Bruce, Erie Times-News
·4 min read

Erie County's number of new COVID-19 cases has remained stubbornly stable all summer and it appears the virus isn't going away any time soon.

The good news, however, is that the latest omicron variants that have spread so easily over the past several months continue to cause less serious illness and death than previous variants have.

"A majority of our COVID cases remain incidental infections. It's not the reason they are in the hospital," said Dr. Christopher Clark, Saint Vincent Hospital president. "It's in isolated cases where we see an impact from COVID. Not like when we had the delta variant."

A majority of COVID-19 patients at Saint Vincent Hospital continue to be people who were admitted for other reasons and test positive for the virus, said Dr. Christopher Clark, Saint Vincent president.
A majority of COVID-19 patients at Saint Vincent Hospital continue to be people who were admitted for other reasons and test positive for the virus, said Dr. Christopher Clark, Saint Vincent president.

The county's number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases rose slightly, from 293 cases between Aug. 31-Sept. 6 to 347 between Sept. 7-13, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. That number has remained between 293 and 372 for each of the past eight weeks.

There has been no significant decline in new cases like the county saw in the summer of 2021, when only 202 new cases were reported in July and 188 in August. Health officials have said the higher case counts this summer are due to omicron's ability to spread and the elimination of most masking and social distancing requirements.

"And those are just the reported numbers," said Charlotte Berringer, R.N., director of community health services for the Erie County Department of Health. "People have to take a PCR test to have their case reported and many, many people with COVID aren't getting a PCR test. They are taking an at-home test or not testing at all, so the numbers are actually much higher."

While case totals have remained consistent, so has the county's number of COVID-19 hospitalizations. The 14-day moving average of people hospitalized each day with COVID has remained between 31.1 and 35.8 since Aug. 26, after increasing from the low 20s the previous month.

As Clark said, few of those people have suffered life-threatening illness due to the virus. The number of county residents with COVID who needed ventilators, an indication of a serious infection, has remained between zero and four all summer, the state health department reported.

Fourteen county residents have died due to COVID since July 1, the county health department reported.

"The people we see with serious COVID illness now tend to be older patients with chronic diseases or cancers," Clark said. "It's acting more like the flu does now than it did, say, during the delta surge."

And while COVID cases, hospitalizations and death have surged in the county each of the past two autumns, epidemiologists from across the country said this fall could be different. It depends on whether a new, more severe COVID-19 variant dominates and how many people get the new COVID-19 vaccine booster shots.

More: Has the COVID vaccine finally reached annual flu shot status? Health officials are hopeful.

How to get new COVID-19 vaccine booster

Clark and Berringer each recommended people get the boosters that are designed to protect against omicron's BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.

The new boosters now are available at many physician offices, vaccine clinics and chain pharmacies. You must already have received your primary series of COVID-19 vaccines to get a booster shot.

More: New COVID-19 vaccine boosters available in Erie County

To receive a vaccine at the LECOM Center for Health and Aging, visit lecom.eventbrite.org or call 814-812-9851. To make a vaccine appointment at Corry Memorial, call 814-664-4641, Ext. 1234.

If you want to receive a vaccine from your Hamot or Saint Vincent provider, call their office or visit upmc.com/coronavirus/covid-vaccine or ahn.org/coronavirus/vaccine/schedule.html.

Here is a look at the county's other COVID-19 measurements between Aug. 31-Sept. 6 and Sept. 7-13, according to the state health department:

  • The rate of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents increased from 108.3 to 128.6.

  • The positivity rate for COVID-19 tests declined from 25.4% to 21.4%.

  • The average daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations dropped from 32.6 to 30.1.

  • The average daily number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators declined from 3.3 to 2.4.

  • The percentage of emergency department visits due to COVID-19 symptoms rose from 0.9% to 1.2%.

Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNBruce.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: COVID-19 cases stable in Erie County; new vaccine boosters available