Three more Butler County residents were listed in Tuesday's COVID-19 death toll.

According to Tuesday's report by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the county also added 78 new confirmed cases Tuesday, marking a three-day decline in new cases.

The county saw 153 cases added Saturday, then 115 Sunday and 88 Monday before Tuesday's update. So far for the month of December, the county has averaged about 99 new confirmed cases per day.

In November, that average was about 56. In October, the county averaged about 16 new confirmed cases per day.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 5,477 county residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 150 have died because of the virus.

Meanwhile state health officials continue to recommend that residents stay home for the holidays and spend it only with immediate family members who already live within the same household.

In a news conference Tuesday, Lindsey Mauldin, a senior adviser with the Department of Health, discussed a new program involving digital case investigations that could help alleviate the burden of high call volumes for the department's 1,675 contact tracers.

Contact tracers will still call someone who tested positive, but instead of conducting the investigation over the phone, they will email a link guiding the infected person to a form they can fill out.

“The Connect and Protect form only takes residents a few minutes to fill out, saving both the public health professionals and those newly diagnosed with COVID-19 one of their most precious resources, time,” Mauldin said.

This is a breaking news report — read more in Wednesday's Butler Eagle.