Allegheny County Authorities Do Not Exclude Local Maskman Dates

Covid-19 cases in Allegheny County are below the threshold that triggers the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated mask guidance, but county leaders have eliminated the need for county-wide mask obligations. did not.

“We’re not there yet, but again, wait a minute,” said Allegheny County, a county official at Rich Fitzgerald, pointing out that it is not considered a highly transparent zone by the CDC definition. Said. “I don’t know what will happen in the next few weeks.”

The CDC’s covid tracker shows that Allegheny County is below the high infection threshold in both the case rate and positive rate categories. The case rate is 17 per 100,000, and the county is in a moderately infected area, said Dr. Debra Bogen, director of health at the county. A positive rate of 2.7% over 7 days means that the county is in a low infection zone by that criterion.

But when the county numbers put them in different zones, the CDC mask guidance is triggered by the higher zones, she said. For example, if the county has a medium transmission zone with a positive rate in the high transmission zone, the county is considered to be in the high transmission zone.

Both Bogen and Fitzgerald emphasized that the guidance changes were frustrating, but aimed at saving lives.

“We know our case is up,” Fitzgerald said. “We also know that hospitals and deaths haven’t increased yet, but we also know that it’s a late indicator.”

The county recorded an average of 56 new cases per day over the past week, an increase of 45.4% over the previous week. From a perspective, the total for the seven days of July 1st was 88, with an average of 13 cases per day for the week.

“This is really a very important moment in a pandemic and the latest in many very important moments,” Bogen said. “The difference between this moment and the previous moment is that this time there is a solution. This time we know exactly what we need to do to protect the community.”

She said the solution was for everyone who could be vaccinated to do so. She begged the population to do so if there was no other reason than to protect those who could not be vaccinated, including all children under the age of 12.

Regarding the more contagious and toxic variants of the virus, Bogen said it was difficult to say how widespread they were in this area. According to her, not all test samples are sent to the sequence. Citing the CDC regional statistics, approximately 66% of cases in the region, including Allegheny County, are associated with delta variants.

“The virus propagates primarily unvaccinated,” she said. “They serve as fertile lands for the emergence of more subspecies.”

According to Bogen, the majority of serious cases and deaths are from unvaccinated people, both locally and nationally, but due to lack of cooperation in contact tracing, it is difficult to determine the exact ratio. ..

“Unfortunately, we have only reached 50% of cases these days,” she said last week. “This impedes our ability to reduce the spread of the infection and makes it difficult to track important data such as whether we are vaccinated.

“It’s clear that the virus is now primarily targeted and thriving among unvaccinated people,” she continued.