The Lead

Pa. Health Dept: More than 5,300 new COVID-19 cases; More than 2,800 hospitalized

By: John L. Micek - October 1, 2021 12:28 pm

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed 5,352 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, up from Thursday’s tally of 4,892 new cases, bringing the statewide total to nearly than 1.43 million since the start of the pandemic.

Hospitalizations due to the virus also continued to climb, with 2,816 people hospitalized as of midday Friday, up from the 2,795 people who where hospitalized on Thursday, according to the Health Department’s COVID tracking website.

There were 692 people in hospital intensive cares, effectively unchanged from Thursday’s tally of 694 people, the state data showed. The number of people using a ventilator rose to 384 people on Friday, up slightly from 379 people on Thursday, the data showed.

The department confirmed 37 new deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Pennsylvania as of midday Thursday, bringing the total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 to 29,437 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 68.8 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.

John L. Micek

A 3-decade veteran of the news business, John L. Micek is the Pennsylvania Capital-Star's Editor-in-Chief. An award-winning political reporter, Micek’s career has taken him from small town meetings and Chicago City Hall to Congress and the Pennsylvania Capitol. His weekly column on U.S. politics is syndicated to 800 newspapers nationwide by Cagle Syndicate. He also contributes commentary and analysis to broadcast outlets in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Micek’s first novel, “Ordinary Angels,” was released in 2019 by Sunbury Press.