COVID peaks and valleys through 2022
At the beginning of 2022, the Pennsylvania Department of Health was reporting upwards of 15,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day. By December, the department was reporting data only once a week, and “15,000 new cases” became the average number of new cases per week.
Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, said several factors have influenced the decline in reported COVID cases. These factors include the availability of at-home tests — the results of which were not reported to the state but at least helped prevent the spread of the illness when people with a positive result stayed home — and the rise in the number of people who got vaccinated against the disease over the year.
The virus has continued to infect people, however. Lichtveld said this is the result of developing variants of COVID-19 which have infected people regardless of vaccination status.
She said the herd immunity, which occurs when a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease, has yet to occur in the nation and Pennsylvania because the population has not reached the necessary rate of vaccination to protect against the spread of COVID.
“When other variants are circulating, we'll create an annual vaccine rather than continuing to boost,” Lichtveld said. “The reason why we were successful is because we were fairly quick with the federal government and state governments in getting vaccines.
“The worry is really about a new variant coming in and infecting again,” Litchtveld continued. “The fewer people who are vaccinated, the greater the opportunity for variants to start circulating.”
According to Lichtveld, the omicron variant known as XBB 1.5 is the dominant variant currently circulating, accounting for about 40% of reported cases. Other variants that circulated this year were the initial omicron strain, and its BA variants, which were common across Pennsylvania in the summer.
Butler Health System had been reporting COVID test counts, as well as the number of inpatients at Butler Memorial Hospital and Clarion Hospital, but ceased those updates in early December.
In total, 12,253 Pennsylvanians died from COVID-19 in 2022, according to data from the Department of Health, for a total of 48,892 since the department began collecting data in 2022. In Butler County, 204 people died of COVID in 2022, for a total of 818 since 2020.
In 2021, 20,278 people died from COVID-19 throughout Pennsylvania; 410 of those were in Butler County.
A handful of inpatients tested positive for COVID-19 each week at Butler Memorial, but by the end of the year, few wound up in the intensive care unit, and even fewer COVID-positive deaths were reported.
Lichtveld said people who are immunocompromised continue to be at risk of serious health consequences if infected with COVID-19. She said a good portion of COVID-positive deaths during the year were likely those individuals.
“Hospitals are better equipped to handle it, but we will see the death rate not changing much in people who are most vulnerable,” Lichtveld said.
Lichtveld said public health was better in general in 2022 than in 2020 or 2021, but some widely adopted practices in previous years such as masking and social distancing have gone by the wayside in recent months. This has caused a rise in some other illnesses that were not prominent the past two years.
“When we were masking, for the most part, we also had one of our lowest flu rates last year. That's not the case this year because fewer and fewer people are masking,” Lichtveld said.
Lichtveld also said she has an optimistic outlook for public health in 2023, but she worries about other aspects of health, particularly mental health. She said there has been a shift in public consciousness around mental health that probably will not be undone.
“The mental health consequences on the nursing and general workforce is (something) we have never seen before,” Lichtveld said. “The whole hospital and health system need to better equip the workforce and provide the kind of care (needed).”
