New COVID-19 infections again surpass 1,000 in Pa.

Alison Beam

Pennsylvania's Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam on July 29, 2021 said Pennsylvania will send text messages to people who began the vaccination process but didn't follow through.

Pennsylvania logged 1,110 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, according to state-run COVID ALERT PA.

Pennsylvania’s seven-day average of new cases reached 815 as of Wednesday — more than five times higher than on July 4, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins.

The number severely ill with COVID-19 in Pennsylvania also rose, with 473 hospitalized Friday morning, up 13 from Thursday. The number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 has increased by more than 200 in less than two weeks.

The number in intensive care, 101, is up 14 from a day earlier, according to Pennsylvania’s tracking dashboard.

Pennsylvania registered eight new COVID-19 deaths on Friday, raising its toll to 27,850.

Cases are surging over much of the United States, with areas with lower vaccination rates seeing the biggest spikes in cases and hospitalizations.

But unlike some areas including Arkansas and Missouri, intensive care beds are still freely available in Pennsylvania.

Nearly 3,500 intensive care beds were available in Pennsylvania as of early Friday, according to the tracking dashboard.

Although Pennsylvania now has a string of days of 1,000 or more confirmed or probable new infections, new infections remain well below the peak seven-day average of 10,563 in December, according to Johns Hopkins.

Still, the volume of new cases amounts to a disappointing reversal from the beginning of the month, when the seven-day average bottomed out at 161 on July 4.

Pennsylvania’s 14-day average of hospitalizations stood at 356 on Friday, up from 265 on July 20.

The more contagious delta variant is blamed for the surges. Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam this week, citing numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said delta accounts for about 65% of new cases in Pennsylvania.

That would make it less prevalent in Pennsylvania than in some parts of the country, especially those with lower vaccination rates.

Delta has prompted a return to indoor face masking requirements or recommendations in some parts of the country, as well as a wave of companies and government entities requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

President Joe Biden this week announced vaccination requirements for federal employees and contractors.

In Pennsylvania, about three dozen colleges and universities have announced vaccination requirements. Penn Medicine, a major Philadelphia-based hospital system, is requiring all employees to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 1.

However, Beam said this week that while Gov. Tom Wolf supports entities that require vaccination, there are no plans for a statewide vaccination mandate.

She also said the state isn’t considering restoring the face mask mandate.

Rather, she said Pennsylvania is relying on vaccination to quell the surge in new cases.

As of Thursday, 78.1% of Pennsylvanians 18 or older had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, tied for eighth-best in the country, according to The New York Times.

However, Pennsylvania’s percentage of fully vaccinated adults, 62.8%, ranked 21st.

Pennsylvania, while having an impressive number of residents who began the vaccination process, is dealing with a problem of many not following through.

This week, Beam said Pennsylvania knows of about 250,000 residents who received one dose but haven’t gone back for the second dose needed for full vaccination. Beam said the state will send them text messages next week as part of an effort to get a higher percentage of Pennsylvanians fully vaccinated.

She stressed that, even if months have passed, they don’t have to start over again.

Nationally, 49.3% of adults are fully vaccinated.

The national pace of vaccination has picked up, driven in part by some prominent Republicans and Evangelical leaders urging people to get vaccinated and stressing the danger posed by the delta variant.

These include U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who blamed misinformation for causing people to go unvaccinated.

“There is bad advice out there, you know. Apparently you see that all over the place: people practicing medicine without a license, giving bad advice. And that bad advice should be ignored,” McConnell told the Reuters news organization.

Another is Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who said people “pushing fake news and conspiracy theories about this vaccine are reckless and causing great harm,” according to Reuters.

She further said it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the new COVID-19 surge.

READ MORE: Pa. will contact people who skipped second COVID-19 shot; no mandates planned

READ MORE: Will COVID-19 vaccination mandates replace mask mandates?

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