The Lehigh Valley has amassed over 200,000 cases of COVID-19 since March 2020, but the region currently is on track to avoid another overwhelming pandemic winter.
For over a month now, both Lehigh and Northampton counties have combined to average just around 100 cases per day — currently at 104 new cases per day — and usually even a little less than that. Comparatively, at this time last year, the area was averaging more than three times that many en route to a winter that would see averages over 20 times the area’s average today.
With Lehigh County at 106,019 total cases and Northampton County at 95,104 total cases, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Lehigh Valley as a whole did crest the 200,000 total case mark this past month, but ultimately, case totals are a counting stat this far into the pandemic — every densely populated area is going to have a staggering case count almost three years into the COVID-19 pandemic.
What matters is the current trends, and the Lehigh Valley is in pretty good shape.
There is still spread of COVID-19, and it’s likely the spread will increase over the next couple of months given past winter trends, but since the Lehigh Valley is in much better position than it was at the start of winter each of the last two years, it’s difficult to see a way in which daily new-case figures could reach the heights of 2021 or 2020, when Pennsylvania was amassing upwards of 10,000-plus new cases per day.
The number of fatally serious COVID-19 cases isn’t as different from years past. There were 30 total deaths caused by the virus in November. That figure was 45 in 2021, 34 in 2020.
It seems as though there are fewer serious cases of COVID-19, but when they are serious, they’re just as serious as in past years. According to data from the health department, there are currently 1,269 patients hospitalized in Pennsylvania (there are no individual county figures in hospital data), which is one-third of the number of hospitalized patients from this day a year ago and even less compared to 2020.
In November, the state added 42,943 total cases of COVID-19 to its total case count, which now stands at 3,360,797. That’s an average of 1,431 per day. In November of 2021, Pennsylvania averaged 5,732 new cases per day.
In each of the last two years, Pennsylvania’s case rate took its biggest jumps in December and January, so the state isn’t out of the woods yet this year. But in years past, there was certainly some semblance of increasing case spread leading up to those months that just hasn’t been seen this year. Ideally, that means the harsh winter that COVID-19 has brought two years in a row is nowhere to be found in 2022.
Health officials say part of ensuring that is getting a COVID-19 vaccine booster, which is now a bivalent vaccine that protects against current, easily spread strains of COVID-19. Lehigh County has 272,743 fully vaccinated individuals and 41,276 residents with the bivalent vaccine, according to data from the health department. Northampton County has 209,873 of its residents fully vaccinated and 29,921 with the bivalent vaccine.
In total, the state has 8.9 million residents fully vaccinated, but only 1.6 million with the bivalent vaccine.
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Connor Lagore may be reached at clagore@njadvancemedia.com.