COVID deaths on the rise in York County, but new cases remain steady

COVID-related deaths are on the rise again in York County, even as the worst of the so-called "tripledemic" appears to be in the rear view.

According to state Department of Health data, the county reported nine COVID deaths over the last week — the greatest single week figure since the beginning of 2022, during the omicron wave. For now, however, some health officials are taking the long-view.

"Fortunately, COVID-19 mortality remains low likely due to increasing community immunity over time," said Dr. Eugene Curley, WellSpan Health medical director of infection control.

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Curley noted that case rates and hospitalizations have remained relatively steady in recent weeks. Likewise, he said, this week's death count only appears larger in comparison to recent months.

"All other days since spring 2022 had only 0 to 2 deaths per day," Curley said. "I therefore do not believe there is a trend of increasing deaths."

He added: "Unlike the past two winters, we are not seeing a significant surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths despite continued widespread community transmission."

Over the last week, state data showed that York County saw 500 new COVID cases, bringing its pandemic totals to 145,616 cases and 1,646 deaths, respectively. Despite this week's spike in new deaths, data analysis by the New York Times shows that average daily new infections fell 22% over the last two weeks.

This comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data showing that the updated COVID-19 booster cuts the risk of someone getting the virus in half, even from the newly dominant XBB.1.5 variant. That variant accounted for 49.1% of COVID cases in the U.S. last week; variants BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 accounted for 26.9% and 13.3% of cases respectively.

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According to CNN, this data was collected by the federally funded Increased Community Access To Testing program that administers COVID tests through pharmacies. It is based off of results for adults receiving tests at participating pharmacies from December 1 to January 13.

While people may be wondering if the protection from the most recent booter in September has worn off, CDC senior epidemiologist Ruth Link-Gelles said at a Wednesday news briefing it's too soon to tell if it has.

“What this tells us is that people that had the bivalent vaccine were better protected than people that were up to date previously, had all their monovalent doses and had not gotten the bivalent vaccine,” Link-Gelles said.

Flu infections, meanwhile, continue to fall after a severe season that peaked in December. Just 186 cases were reported this week, bringing York County's total to 10,186. That's part of a Pennsylvania total of 174,964 since the flu season began.

— Reach Matt Enright via email at menright@yorkdispatch.com or via Twitter at @Matthew_Enright.