Union County's Covid Cases: This Week's Numbers

UNION COUNTY, NJ — Cases of the coronavirus continue to have an impact on Union County, according to this week's data.

The state said on Friday that Union County has seen 51,066 total confirmed cases of the virus since the start of the pandemic, and a cumulative 1,601 confirmed deaths.

Those numbers represent an increase of 1,185 cases, or 2.3 percent, since last week. The fatality total increased by 20 deaths, or 1.3 percent, since last week. Those rates indicated a slight decrease in the rate of new cases, but a slight increase in the percent of new deaths.

On Friday, March 5, Union County had reported a total of 49,881 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and 1,581 confirmed deaths. That was a 2.6 percent increase in cases since the previous week, and a 1 percent increase in deaths.

The week before that, the county reported 48,598 confirmed cases of the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, an increase of 2 percent since the previous week. The county also reported a death toll of 1,564, a 2 percent increase in the weekly death rate over the previous week's numbers.

The disease’s impact is reflected in the state Department of Health's most recent "COVID-19 Activity Level Report," issued weekly.

See Patch's weekly update on where to get a vaccine in Union County later this weekend.

New stories this week:

• North Jersey Mom Says: Listen To 'Long Haulers'
• Westfield Mayor On Her Unexpected Year: 'No Playbook'

New Jersey highs and lows

• On Wednesday, the state reported 56 new deaths in 24 hours, as well as 1,961 current hospitalizations, 408 of those in critical care, 58 percent of those on ventilators, and 6 new cases of a variant "of concern," including one of the South African variant.
• The cumulative state death toll is 21,294.
• New Jersey's peak daily death toll on April 30, 2020 was 460 fatalities reported in one day. The number then steadily dropped until late summer, when cases began rising again.
• The daily fatality rate still has not dropped to the level of Sept. 7, when there were a total of only two coronavirus fatalities reported statewide.
• As of this week, 530,000 Americans had died of the virus. (You can see which states had the highest death toll in the past week on this CDC map.)Here are statewide coronavirus resources:

• NJ COVID-19 Information Hub: https://covid19.nj.gov/
• General COVID-19 questions: 2-1-1
• NJ COVID-19 hotline: (800) 222-1222

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