12:54
Brief
The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed 5,071 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, bringing the statewide total to 1.4 million since the start of the pandemic. That’s down from Thursday’s tally of 5,489 new cases.
Hospitalizations due to the virus also continued to climb, with 2,641 people hospitalized on Friday, according to the Health Department’s COVID tracking website. Of those hospitalized with the virus, 662 are in intensive care units, and 324 were using a ventilator, state data indicated.
The department confirmed 34 new deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Pennsylvania, bringing the total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 to 29,064 since the state of the pandemic.
Pennsylvania’s positivity rate remains at 8.9 percent.
As of midday Friday, the commonwealth’s vaccination rate was 68.2 percent, the Health Department said in a statement.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.