Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said Tuesday that the latest county data confirms what he believed to be true last week: The latest Covid-19 surge is finally past its peak and trending downward.
He pointed to several pieces of evidence:
• While the positive test rate of 20% remains high, it is lower than last week.
• Both confirmed Covid-19 case rates and weekly totals are down, compared with prior weeks. The number of new weekly cases declined by 16%, the first decline in weekly case totals since before Christmas.
• And while hospitalizations involving patients who happen to test positive for the virus continue to rise, a new subset of hospital data shows that the number of people who are being admitted specifically because of Covid-19 symptoms remains level.
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One ongoing wrinkle in the data is that the county figures do not include those who took an at-home Covid-19 test and may have tested positive.
Overall, though, the county's numbers and the state's numbers show that the post-holiday surge in Covid-19 cases is past its peak.
"We believe we've peaked with regards to the Omicron variant, which was huge," he said at his weekly news briefing.
State statistics reflect a similar trend. The seven-day average percentage of people who tested positive for the virus across the state continues to drop and, as of Monday, was just over 15%. A week ago, that same metric was just under 21%.
Poloncarz also shared a new Covid-19 hospitalization chart that not only reflects total hospital and intensive care unit cases, but also reflects how many patients were admitted primarily due to Covid-19 symptoms, as opposed to being admitted for other reasons but testing positive for the virus due to routine hospital testing.
The new chart shows hospitalizations primarily due to Covid-19 remain high, but level.
"What's growing are the number of people who are in the hospital with Covid-19 but are not there for a Covid illness," Poloncarz said. "They may be there for surgery. They may have a broken leg."
Finally, Poloncarz said he wanted to dispel the notion that it is hard to get access to a Covid-19 test. He said Erie County still has plenty of same-day appointments for people who want a PCR test – which are often turned around in a day – or who have symptoms and qualify for a rapid test.
Anyone interested in getting tested for free by the county should call (716) 858-2929.
