COVID Infections Climb In Bucks As Race To Vaccinate Continues

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — It was a tale of two surges in Bucks County over the past week, as the effort to tamp down the coronavirus pandemic continued. On a positive note, access to COVID-19 vaccinations opened up to thousands more, with county health officials opening a fifth public site to get a growing supply of vaccine into arms.

Bucks County has cleared its waiting list of people eligible for a shot under Phase 1A of Pennsylvania's vaccination plan and on Monday opened up appointments to people in Phase 1B. Appointments can be made via the county’s vaccination information portal.

But, at the same time, the number of new infections in Bucks County was continuing to climb as well.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 1,964 new coronavirus cases in Bucks County last week — an 8-percent increase over the week before. The county's 282 new cases per day marked the fourth week in a row that case numbers had risen and the highest in more than two months.

The death rate has not yet followed the case numbers, with seven Bucks County COVID deaths last week bringing the county's total since the pandemic began to 1,183. But hospitalizations had started to rise — with the 96 coronavirus patients in the county marking a 50-percent increase from a month earlier.

Of those, 11 patients were in critical condition and on ventilators.

"Our hospitals continue to remain in very good shape," said Dr. David Damsker, director of the Bucks County Health Department. "While cases are indeed up some, there is a trade-off between these increases and finally allowing people to go back to some of their normal activities. Pushing through as many vaccinations as we can, along with some immunity from natural infection, will soon get us where we want to be."

On Monday, Bucks County opened a vaccination site in the Warwick Square Shopping Center on York Road. It became the fifth county-run vaccination site and was brought online to help get a significantly bigger supply of vaccine to the public.

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County providers received nearly 31,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines from the state last week, marking one of Bucks County's biggest shipments since vaccine became available. Then, on Monday, the county got 20,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine that had originally been slotted for a regional, mass-vaccination site before Pennsylvania abandoned that plan.

The Warwick Square vaccine site joins four other county-run locations at Bucks County Community College campuses in Bristol, Newtown and Perkasie and in Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem.

Altogether, 264,645 vaccine doses had been administered in Bucks County at week's end — full vaccinations for 93,759 people and partial vaccinations for another 86,135.

The county sites had given 52,685 of those doses, including 10,771 shots last week alone.