Allegheny County officials expressed optimism that the record-breaking wave of Covid-19 cases due to the omicron variant could ease in the near future, and said that despite the high number of cases, hospitalizations in most groups haven't reached the peaks of December 2020.
There were 22,326 Covid-19 infections in Allegheny County reported for the week of Jan. 9-15, down slightly from the 23,459 reported for the week of Jan. 2-8. Last week averaged about 3,000 new cases a day with a positivity rate of 35%, according to county data. That's compared to hundreds of cases a day reported in early December.
Allegheny County Health Department Director Dr. Debra Bogen said during the county's Wednesday afternoon news conference the cases seemed to have reached their peak and said she was optimistic that they would soon drop.
"If we follow the pattern of others around the country and the world, I hope this plateauing of cases over the past 10 days portends an impending decline like other regions have experienced," Bogen said. Bogen said she hoped that the region could soon say goodbye to omicron.
That sense of optimism was echoed by Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.
"We're certainly hopeful we'll follow the pattern of everywhere else," Fitzgerald said.
It wasn't all good news: Hospitalizations remained at a level that Bogen said was high, with over 330 hospitalized in a week.
"This is lower than the peak of hospitalizations in December 2020, despite the far higher number of cases," Bogen said. "This reflects the lower hospitalization rates of the omicron variant and also reflects the impact of vaccines in lowering hospitalizations."
Covid-19 deaths, however, were 210 in December 2021, the third-highest of the two-year-old pandemic.
She said that she didn't believe the region's hospitals and health systems would see demand beyond their capacity. She said that January 2022 is in a much better place than December 2020, with the vaccinations available as well as treatment options and experience by providers in caring for the virus.
"I'm not really concerned at this point that we're going to exceed capacity," she said. But she said that the hospital staffs have been working around the clock tirelessly.
And Bogen said she was concerned about the hospitalizations among children under 4 years old, the only group remaining that hasn't been able to get a Covid-19 vaccine yet. She said the rate of hospitalization in this age group was 1.6 per 100,000 in early December but, in the midst of the omicron wave, had gone to 23 per 100,000 the week after Christmas.
"This is the only age group for which we don't have vaccines, so we as a community have to do our part to reduce infections," Bogen said.