yourdailylocal
WARREN, Pa. – Warren County has had more confirmed COVID-19 cases reported in the last four days than it did for the entire month of November.
The county had 26 confirmed cases reported Wednesday, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health COVID-19 Dashboard data update Thursday. That brings the total from Sunday through Wednesday to 216 new cases.
There were 212 cases reported in all of November.
Wednesday’s cases brings the December total to 320, more than five times the total number of cases from March through October and just over a 50 percent increase from November.
The Dashboard lists two deaths for Warren County, though there were two COVID-related deaths in the county last week that have not been accounted for yet.
According to the Dashboard information, five COVID-19 patients are on ventilators.
“At this moment, there are currently 5 patients on BiPap that are being treated for COVID,” Warren General Hospital COO/Chief Nursing Officer Joe Akif told yourdailylocal.com in an email Wednesday evening. “This is a machine that assists with breathing via positive air pressure. A ventilator essentially breathes for you when you are unable to do so on your own. The BiPap machine is non-invasive. On the dashboard, both machines are categorized as ventilators.”
Akif also explained the Dashboard’s hospitalization information does not always reflect real-time conditions as “the number of patients in the hospital literally changes by the hour.” (See this story for more on how Warren General Hospital is caring for COVID-19 patients.)
The cumulative case count, up to 685 with probable cases (yourdailylocal.com is only reporting confirmed cases at this point because the Pennsylvania Department of Health, in an e-mail to the site last week, said it can’t track whether a probable case has become a confirmed case thus meaning a case may be double-counted if probable and confirmed cases are added together), includes those cases the state considers “recovered.”
A case is considered recovered “if a case has not been reported as a death, and it is more than 30 days past the date of their first positive test (or onset of symptoms) then an individual is considered recovered,” according to the Department of Health.
Of the 685 total cumulative cases (confirmed and probable) 585 have been reported in the last 30 days.
