Westmoreland County continues to see covid-related deaths reported on a daily basis, with three new such deaths added Tuesday.
It is the 20th straight day the county has recorded at least one covid-related death. In that time, 45 deaths have been recorded.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 70 new cases of coronavirus — 51 confirmed, 19 probable — from 344 PCR tests.
The county is seeing a decline in its seven-day case total, moving from a high of 671 on Oct. 18 to 502 on Tuesday — a 25% decline.
According to the state’s covid-19 tracking website, there are 53 county residents hospitalized with the virus, with five of them on ventilators. State officials report there are 88 operational ventilators in the county, with 15 (17%) currently in use for all illnesses.
Since the pandemic began in March, there have been 4,075 confirmed cases of covid-19 via a total of 57,846 PCR tests. That makes for a current test-positive rate of 7.12%, a significant increase since Oct. 1, when the rate was 4.76%.
In all, the county has recorded 4,671 cases — both confirmed and probable — of covid-19.
