Why covid hospitalizations are plunging in Allegheny County – TribLIVE

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Allegheny Countys recent drop in covid-19 hospitalizations is likely the result of multiple factors, including public support for mitigation measures, officials said.

Allegheny County on Friday reported the largest drop this month in hospitalizations resulting from the virus. Data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health showed there were 190 covid-19 patients hospitalized in the county Friday, marking the lowest amount of hospitalizations in Allegheny County since early November.

Multiple factors likely contributed to this downward trend in hospitalizations, said Dr. Donald Yealy, UPMCs senior medical director and chairman of emergency medicine at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh.

Yealy said hes seen declining numbers in individuals seeking testing, individuals receiving positive test results and individuals requiring hospital care. These downward trends began in mid-December and are continuing, he said.

He cited recent governmental restrictions that closed indoor dining and gyms though Jan. 4 as factors that likely helped numbers begin to drop.

Individual actions including mask wearing and social distancing also played a key role, he said.

The biggest is the human behavior and the buy-in about how simple things can matter, Yealy said.

He said its too early to attribute the decrease to vaccination efforts, but they will soon come into play.

After watching case numbers rise drastically in the fall, Yealy said, many people began taking the virus more seriously and adhered more strictly to mask wearing and social distancing measures. Plus, now that the holiday season has passed, people may be less tempted to partake in large gatherings.

The news is good, but were not out of the woods yet, he said, urging people to continue abiding by mitigation efforts.

Masking, social distancing and hand washing are important factors in declining hospitalizations statewide, said Maggi Barton, deputy press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Following these proven public health practices, our mitigation orders, and most importantly, the resilience of our fellow Pennsylvanians to unite against covid-19, Pennsylvania is seeing encouraging data relating to less covid-19 spread within the community as we report lowered statewide positivity rates as well as lowered case counts, Barton said. With a lowered amount of Pennsylvanians contracting the virus, there has been a lowered impact on our hospitalizations for covid-19.

Individual efforts have combined with increased knowledge to drive hospitalizations down, Yealy said. Better understanding of the virus and how to treat it can help health care providers keep people out of the hospital or shorten their hospital stays.

Over the year of the pandemic, weve learned a lot about what works and what doesnt work, he said. So weve learned to test better, to test earlier, to use drugs and therapies that help and avoid the ones that dont really help. Much of the tools didnt exist a year ago now theyre available to us.

Another factor for the recent decline in covid-19 hospitalizations, Yealy said, is simply the nature of the virus.

We know that pandemics, separate from our behavior, they have a tendency for there to be ups and downs in viral activity. So some of it is the nature of viral pandemics, he said.

Its impossible to predict whether the downward trend will continue steadily or whether hospitalizations and case numbers may peak again, Yealy said. But hes optimistic that trends will largely continue downward.

I do think, in general, between our personal behavior and growing vaccination efforts, that the overall trend is that over months, the numbers will continue to go down, Yealy said.

Julia Felton is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Julia at 724-226-7724, jfelton@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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Why covid hospitalizations are plunging in Allegheny County - TribLIVE

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