Westmoreland County adds 14 covid deaths

Westmoreland County on Thursday added 14 additional covid deaths and 203 cases, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported.

The newly-reported deaths bring the county’s death toll to 516. The county passed 500 reported deaths on Wednesday. There have been 93 deaths attributed to the virus this month in the county.

The total number of cases in Westmoreland County now stands at 22,713, with 16,580 confirmed and 6,133 probable since the first cases were reported in March. There have been 77,015 people in the county who have tested negative for the virus.

The state Department of Health defines a probable case as one in which a patient has “a positive serology (antibody) test and either covid-19 symptoms or a high-risk exposure” to someone who has been confirmed to have coronavirus.

The county’s seven-day average is 244 cases and the county’s seven-day total cases of 1,710. These figure are slightly above numbers from a week ago, where the seven-day average was 239 cases and seven-day total cases was 1,670.

According to the state’s covid-19 dashboard, 147 Westmoreland County residents are hospitalized for covid-19 (down five from Wednesday), 13 of them are in intensive care units and six of them are on ventilators.

The state vaccine dashboard shows that 8,669 partial doses and 1,970 full doses of the vaccines have been administered to county residents.

Vaccines are getting out the people. On Wednesday, residents and staff members at Caritas Christi, part of the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, in Hempfield were vaccinated.