Summit Gives Coronavirus Totals, Trends For Month of February

SUMMIT, NJ — As Union County residents look for vaccine appointments at local sites, municipalities like Summit have continued to report new cases and fatalities.

The city reported on Monday — the first day of March — that there were two fatalities among residents in February, bringing the city's number since the start of the pandemic to 23.

The two residents who passed away were men aged 63 and 54. The passing of the 63-year-old man had been reported in early February.

In the month of February, there were 146 COVID-19 cases in Summit, a 47 percent decrease from 274 cases in January. There have been 1,385 positive confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic.

The state of New Jersey said Wednesday that it had confirmed 63 new deaths since the day before, bringing the total death toll from the virus statewide to 21,052. While daily deaths are down from the first months of the year, they are still much higher than the lowest rate of two new deaths reported on Sept. 7.

On Monday, the state said 1,865 patients statewide were hospitalized with the virus, 387 of those in ICU and 226 of those on ventilators.

The age breakdowns in Summit for February were:

• 30 cases ages 18 and younger;
• 31 cases ages 19 to 29;
• 13 cases ages 30 to 39;
• 27 cases ages 40 to 49;
• 32 cases ages 50 to 59;
• 7 cases ages 60 to 69;
• 3 cases 70 to 79; and
• Two cases ages 80 to 84.

Contract tracing determined that of those:

• 42 cases had no known exposure;
• 33 cases with a positive household contact;
• 28 cases were unable to be reached;
• 17 cases with a known exposure;
• 15 cases diagnosed in a prior month but reported during February;
• Three cases associated with sports;
• Two cases associated with a workplace;
• Two cases refused to be interviewed;
• Two cases associated with travel; and
• Two cases were hospitalized (ages 68, 53)

Other information

• As of Wednesday, more than 518,000 Americans have died of the virus. (You can see which states had the highest death toll in the past week on this CDC map.)
• See the Patch list of places to get vaccinated in Union County here, as well as tips to find appointments.
• Some in New Jersey have been helped to find vaccine appointments via social media groups, like New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info on Facebook, which has 67,000 members.
• The state is expected to get 70,000 doses this week of the new Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Read more here.
• The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use messenger RNA (mRNA), a new type of vaccine that doesn't include the weakened virus, but teaches human cells to make a protein that triggers the immune response (read more about that here). Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is more traditional.

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