Why Covid hospitalizations are plunging in Allegheny County

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

Allegheny County reported the largest drop this month in hospitalizations due to the virus on Friday. Data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health showed that 190 patients with covid-19 had been hospitalized in the county on Friday, the lowest number of hospitalizations in Allegheny County since early November.

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

Yealy said he has seen a drop in the number of people seeking testing, people receiving positive test results and people requiring hospital care. These downward trends started in mid-December and are continuing, he said.

He cited recent government restrictions that closed restaurants and indoor gyms on Jan.4 as factors that likely helped the numbers start to drop.

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

“Most important is human behavior and the buy-in on how the simple things can matter,” Yealy said.

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

After seeing the number of cases increase dramatically in the fall, Yealy said, many people have started to take the virus more seriously and adhere more strictly to mask wear and social distancing measures. Also, now that the holiday season is over, people may be less tempted to participate in large gatherings.

“The news is good, but we are not out of the woods yet,” he said, urging people to continue to respect mitigation efforts.

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

“As a result of these proven public health practices, our mitigation orders, and most importantly the resilience of our fellow Pennsylvanians to unite against covid-19, Pennsylvania sees encouraging data for less spread. of covid-19 within the community as we report a decrease in positivity statewide. the rates as well as the reduced number of cases, ”Barton said. “With a decrease in the number of Pennsylvanians contracting the virus, the impact on our hospitalizations for covid-19 has decreased.”

Individual efforts have combined with increased knowledge to reduce hospitalizations, Yealy said. A better understanding of the virus and how to treat it can help health care providers prevent people from entering hospital or shorten their hospital stay.

“During the year of the pandemic, we learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t,” he said. “So we’ve learned to test better, to test earlier, to use drugs and therapies that help and to avoid those that don’t really help. Most of the tools did not exist a year ago – they are now available to us. “

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

“We know that pandemics, distinct from our behavior, tend to cause ups and downs in viral activity. So that’s part of the nature of viral pandemics, ”he said.

It is impossible to predict whether the downward trend will continue steadily or whether hospitalizations and the number of cases could peak again, Yealy said. But he is optimistic that the trends will continue largely downward.

“I think, in general, between our personal behavior and the increasing vaccination efforts, that the general trend is that as the months go by, the numbers will continue to drop,” Yealy said.

Julia Felton is a writer for Tribune-Review. You can contact Julia at 724-226-7724, [email protected] or via Twitter .