Westfield Sees One More Coronavirus Fatality

WESTFIELD, NJ — As Union County residents look for vaccine appointments at local sites, municipalities like Westfield continue to report new cases and fatalities. Mayor Shelley Brindle said Tuesday that another resident has passed away from the virus since the last update on Feb. 19, a 78-year-old man.

This brings the township's total fatalities since a year ago to 54.

For the month of February, the Department of Health confirmed 232 cases of COVID-19 in Westfield. The total cases in the township are 1,838 since last March.

The good news is that the case number is less than half of what it was in January (483).

Brindle said, "Regional Health Officer Megan Avallone reports that while all but two regions in New Jersey dropped from a high to moderate activity level, our region is experiencing a high level of activity, although Westfield is currently at a moderate level. Even though we are seeing a decrease in cases, last week New Jersey ranked second in the nation for the highest number of cases per capita — so the reality is that things are improving but we are still very much dealing with a 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 month of the year, they are still much higher than the lowest rate of two new deaths reported back 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.

Contact tracing of cases in Westfield

Of the cases in February, Brindle said:

• 64 had no known exposure
• 50 were unable to be reached
• 41 had a positive household contact
• 23 were diagnosed in a prior month but reported during February
• 18 had a known exposure
• 7 were associated with youth sports
• 7 were hospitalized (ages 90, 81, 78, 72, 67, 65, 23)
• 6 refused to be interviewed
• 5 were associated with work
• 5 remain under investigation
• 3 were associated with a party
• 2 were associated with travel
• 1 was associated with a long-term care facility.

The ages of those cases ranged from under a year to 96 years old, Brindle said.

Age breakdown for February:

• Age 9 and under: 17 cases
• Age 10-19: 51 cases
• Age 20-29: 32 cases
• Age 30-39: 29 cases
• Age 40-49: 30 cases
• Age 50-59: 37 cases
• Age 60-69: 17 cases
• Age 70-79: 10 cases
• Age 80-89: 5 cases
• Age 90 and above: 3 cases
• Age unconfirmed: 1 case

"Of these 232 cases," Brindle said, "57 were received since my last update (on February 19) through February 28. The most highly impacted age group for the month was ages 10 through 19, representing 22 percent of the reported cases."

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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