Keith Mayer: Pa. health department discontinues daily COVID statistical updates
May 5—The Pennsylvania Department of Health has discontinued daily updates of the COVID-19 dashboard that has been an online spot for statistics for nearly two years.
Weekly case, death and hospitalizations updates are expected on Wednesdays. The vaccinations portion of the dashboard has been updating weekly on Friday.
The weekly Early Warning Monitoring Dashboard has been modified to mark seven-day periods ending Mondays, a change from Thursdays.
The most recent daily COVID case count for Berks was 72, the most since Feb. 22.
The health department said this in an emailed statement Thursday:
"The COVID-19 pandemic is not over and Department of Health staff are continually monitoring COVID-19 trends to gain a more accurate and comprehensive picture of what is occurring across the commonwealth.
"The shift to weekly updates will provide more meaningful trends as we anticipate fluctuations in data during this phase of the pandemic. Pennsylvania is joining more than 40 other states that have already shifted to less-than-daily data posting."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is continuing to update statistics daily in its county tracker.
There is no daily count of cases but a most-recent seven-day total, which was 323, an average of 46, agrees with the most recent Pennsylvania data.
The CDC also issues a daily positivity rate, which was 7.84%.
The CDC's vaccination statistics are updated daily and they showed:
—256,081: Berks residents fully vaccinated age 5 and older.
—112,643: All boosters and all extra shots for the immunocompromised.
The population of Berks County is 429,000, according to the latest census data.
People who have died of all causes after being counted in the vaccination statistics are not purged from the numbers.
