Berks County COVID deaths disproportionately high in past week

Feb. 26—The daily COVID report Friday from the state Department of Health shows continuation of a short-term trend: Berks County residents have been dying of the disease at a disproportionate rate in the past week.

And, most of them likely haven't occurred in the county.

There were five more deaths of Berks residents Friday in the state report for a pandemic total of 898. They were among 69 deaths reported statewide. Just that statistic illustrates the issue: Berks residents were 8% of the state total.

The state provides death numbers based on county of residence. Coroners across the state report deaths that occur within their county jurisdictions no matter where the decedents lived.

The county coroner's office reported no deaths Friday, and the pandemic total remained at 859 deaths, including 43 nonresidents who probably won't appear in the state report for Berks, according to acting county Coroner Jonn M. Hollenbach.

The state and the coroners both believe they are doing the right thing, but it has led to acknowledgement that it will be difficult to reconcile the separate totals. The longer the pandemic goes on, the harder the reconciliation.

The state has reported 19 deaths of Berks residents in the past seven days. The county coroner's office has reported eight deaths within Berks, including a Montgomery County resident.

The state provides no information about deaths other than the count. Hollenbach said the state has been providing a little more information to coroners, and that most of the deaths of Berks residents outside of the county occur in hospitals and nursing homes in adjoining counties.

"I have seen an uptick this year of deaths of Berks residents outside the county," he said.

Hollenbach mentioned a hospice center outside of Berks that has been the site of deaths of county residents.

But he said that while his data is real-time, the state counts deaths as the death certificates arrive, which could be days or weeks after the actual death.

Those certificates arrive from funeral homes, and the address of the decedent is given by family members to the funeral home, and the question becomes: What address does the family give if their loved one had residences inside and outside of Berks?

It's even possible that some of the out-of-county deaths Hollenbach records might turn out to be Berks deaths in the state's eyes if the family provides a Berks address.

Hollenbach uses the most recent address of the individual, but the state's address is dependent on what the family says.

"There are so many different variables about what that all could mean, and you and I don't have access to the information," Hollenbach said.

Berks residents have made up 5% of the total deaths for the past week, but the county makes up 3% of the state population.

However, for the full pandemic, Berks residents are 2.5% of the state's death total.

Statewide, a total of 23,937 people have died of COVID, the state said. The trend has been down since the peak a few days before Christmas.

The health department has not commented on the recent Berks deaths.

Daily report

Berks County added 106 COVID cases on Friday, and the pandemic case total reached 35,476, according to the health department.

Each new case is a new person testing positive. Each day's report is a composite of the previous day's totals.

The 14-day average dipped to 98, lowest since the beginning of November.

The average smooths the uneven reporting of test results.

Statewide, there was an upswing in new COVID cases to 3,346, pushing the pandemic total to 926,336. It was the first time over 3,000 since Feb. 17.

The number of test results analyzed for the daily report was 63,728, the most since Feb. 12. It's unclear why there was such a large number of tests.

Between Feb. 12 and Thursday, test results had declined to late October-early November levels of 20,000 to 30,000, but then leapt to 52,000-plus on Thursday then on to the Friday result.

The health department report Friday showed hospitalizations at 1,897, down 65 from Thursday.

The Berks component Friday was 57.

Reading Hospital's online dashboard showed 43 COVID patients, and Penn State Health St. Joseph's had 16. Due to the flow of admission and discharges and the timing of each report, the hospitals' count rarely equals the state's.

The number of completed vaccinations in Berks was up more than 900 to 20,342 while those with only the first dose was up slightly to 19,742.

First-timers migrate to the "completed" column after the second dose. Berks is among the few counties to have more completed inoculations than those with the first dose.

Until Friday's report, the number of people with first dose in Berks had been going down daily since last week.

Overall in Pennsylvania about 649,000 residents have completed the vaccination process, or about 5% of the population.

The state map of vaccine providers is here: https://tinyurl.com/1gmxvajw.

The latest issuance of vaccine is available here.