Allegheny County on Saturday recorded 1,197 new coronavirus cases as the community continues to rack up covid-19 infections during the holiday season.
The report is a 169-case jump from Thursday’s previous record of 1,028 and the second day the county has surpassed 1,000 cases.
Officials reported 911 cases Friday.
Five new deaths were reported, lifting the county’s toll at 575.
There were 70 deaths reported throughout the week; 64 of which have been recorded in December.
The dates of death occurred between Nov. 19 and Dec. 3. One person was in their 60s; one in their 70s; two in their 80s and one in the 90s.
Three of the victims were residents of long-term care facilities.
The county has had 32,651 cases of covid-19, according to data from the Allegheny County Health Department.
Of the new cases, 779 are confirmed, while 418 are listed as probable.
Health officials define a probable case as one in which a patient has a positive viral antigen test or covid symptoms with a “high-risk exposure” to someone who has been confirmed to have coronavirus.
The recent batch of samples comprising 2,813 tests were collected from Nov. 16 through Friday. Only seven of those positive tests were more than a week old, officials said.
The tests yielded a positivity rate of about 27.7%.
Twenty-two new hospitalizations were reported. Officials say 2,211 people have been hospitalized since the virus was first reported in Allegheny County on March 14.
Saturday’s cases range in age from 2 months to 101 years, with a median of 42 years old.
Through the first five days of December, the county has amassed 4,247 (850/day) new cases and is on pace to log 26,331 cases for the month.
In the entirety of October, the county had seen 3,448 new cases of the virus, which was an increase of 72.3% from September (2,001). In November, officials recorded 12,608 new cases; a nearly 80% from the county’s total cases leading up to that point.
