What Erie County did right during COVID-19 pandemic: New PHC4 report

David Bruce, Erie Times-News
·3 min read
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Erie County posted one of the state's lowest COVID-19 hospitalization rates during the pandemic while also having one of the highest percentages of people getting the bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine, according to a new statewide report.

That is not a coincidence, Erie-area health officials said.

"I certainly think you can make a direct correlation between fewer people being hospitalized and more of them getting the booster," said Marcus Babiak, chief operating officer of LECOM Health's Millcreek Community Hospital. "The COVID-19 vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting COVID but it does significantly reduce your risk of getting sick enough to be hospitalized."

Marcus Babiak, chief operating officer of Millcreek Community Hospital
Marcus Babiak, chief operating officer of Millcreek Community Hospital

"COVID-19, The Impact on Health Care in Pennsylvania," which was published Thursday, examines how the pandemic affected and changed Pennsylvania and its health-care system.

More: COVID-19 walloped Pa. hospitals with added costs, staffing needs. Here are the numbers.

The report — produced by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, and the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania — focuses mostly on statewide data but does include county-specific information.

Erie County posted a COVID-19 hospitalization rate of 155.5 patients per 10,000 residents between March 2020 and December 2022, the seventh-lowest rate in the state. The county also reported 18% of its residents received the COVID-19 bivalent booster, the third-highest percentage in western Pennsylvania and 10th-highest statewide.

While Babiak said he believes there is a direct link between the two measures, Dr. Tim Pelkowski said several additional factors also played roles in the county's relatively low hospitalization rate.

"In my heart, I believe the vaccination rate makes a difference, along with social distancing and wearing face masks," said Pelkowski, program director of Saint Vincent Hospital's family medicine residency.

Cooperation among health systems, ECDH helped Erie County during pandemic

Another possible reason Erie County fared relatively well in dealing with COVID-19 was the level of cooperation among the local health systems and Erie County government, Babiak said.

Officials from UPMC Hamot, Saint Vincent, LECOM Health and the Erie County Department of Health met almost daily during the initial months of the pandemic.

"We didn't address this in our individual silos," Babiak said. "We collaborated, shared ideas and even transferred patients. To have large health systems like AHN and UPMC able to share what they saw trending in their sister cities helped us to anticipate what would happen next."

Whatever the reasons, the lower hospitalization rate did not extend beyond Erie County's borders. Here is a look at the rates for nearby Pennsylvania counties, along with their bivalent booster percentages:

  • Erie — 155.5, 18%

  • Crawford — 226.8, 12.8%

  • Warren — 251.3, 14.1%

  • Venango — 240.7, 12.3%

Rural counties faced special COVID-19 challenges

Rural counties posted some of Pennsylvania's highest COVID-19 hospitalization rates, according to the PHC4 report. A lack of access likely played a crucial role, said Jason Chenault, UPMC Hamot's director of emergency, hospitalist and critical care services.

"Not only do rural counties have less access to health care in general, the emphasis on distributing the COVID-19 vaccine initially was to go to the areas with the highest populations," Chenault said.

LECOM Health's Corry Memorial Hospital, which treats patients from both Erie and Warren counties, saw plenty of demand for the initial series of COVID-19 vaccines.

But the demand waned for the bivalent booster and the more recent COVID-19 vaccine that became available in fall 2023, said Patricia White, Corry Memorial's director of patient care services.

Now Corry Memorial, along with other area hospitals, is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 admissions. None of the patients are up-to-date on their vaccinations, White said.

"I'd say 50% of our COVID-19 admissions have never had a COVID vaccine and the other 50% have had at least one or two vaccines," White said. "I don't know any of them have had the most recent one."

Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ETNBruce.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: New PHC4 report shows Erie County PA did well during COVID-19 pandemic