PA Sees 14 Percent Increase In COVID Cases Heading Into November

PENNSYLVANIA — After weeks of remaining steady or in slight decline, coronavirus numbers are ticking up across Pennsylvania in early November.

The past week saw all six of the key metrics tracked by the Pennsylvania Department of Health's Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard move in the wrong direction. It comes after an early fall that has seen the state largely buck the trend of the past two years and resist an early fall surge.

Variants of concern continue to be tracked by the CDC, including the new XBB strain that officials say appears resistant to vaccines.

Pennsylvania has just five counties "high" level of transmission, in which masks are recommended in indoor, public places. While there are consistent weekly fluctuations (last week the there were four), that number was as high was 14 in September. Tioga, Mercer, Bradford, Sullivan and Susquehanna are the "high" counties this week.

The CDC adopted the community-level metric — a metric based on hospitalizations and case rates — in late February. The agency updates its color-coded COVID maps each Thursday, recommending masks in counties with "high" community levels.

Metrics rising

All of the key metrics tracked by the state have seen an increase in the past week, though the numbers remain low compared both to where they were earlier this year and where they've been in past years at this time.

Here's the latest:

• 9,576 total new cases, an increase from 8,968
• An incidence rate of 74.8, an increase from 70.1
• A positivity rate of 11.5 percent, an increase from 11.2 percent
• 1,223 average daily hospitalizations, an increase from 1,213
• 64.7 average patients on ventilators per day, an increase over 64.6
• 2.1 percent of all emergency room visits are due to COVID-19, up from 1.8 last week

The New York Times coronavirus tracker notes that the state has seen a 14 percent increase in new cases over the past two weeks. The hospitalization rate has increased by two percent and the number of people in intensive care has increased five percent in that same time frame.

While these numbers are well below the surges of the last two autumns, it's worth noting that those surges did not peak in intensity, for the most part, until January. January 2022 saw the highest average cases of the entire pandemic in Pennsylvania, while January 2021 had the highest average deaths, according to CDC statistics.

Tracking other variants

The CDC and state officials continue to track other variants of concern, including the new BQ.1 and XBB strains that are subvariants of omicron.

In Pennsylvania, while the BQ.1 strain is present, it still accounts for only 2.44 percent of cases, according to the CDC.

XBB, meanwhile, has only been found in New York and has not yet been confirmed in Pennsylvania.

The pair of new variatns have driven up cases in other countries around the world, including Singapore and Bangladesh, Bloomberg reports. Experts say it XBB is "immune evasive," Fortune reports, although it is not yet clear how effective the new bivalent booster will be in stopping it.