The number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered in Pennsylvania has dropped by 19.3% in the last two weeks, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
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The FINANCIAL For the past two weeks, the second floor of the Pottruck Health & Fitness Center, the Gimbel Gymnasium has been bustling not with free-throw practice or pick-up basketball games, but with Penn faculty, staff, postdocs, and students navigating the repurposed space to receive their COVID-19 vaccines, University of Pennsylvania notes.
Just over one year since COVID-19’s impacts were first felt across campus, Penn is now offering one of the greatest tools in the fight against the pandemic to members of the University community. The successful launch of the Penn Cares COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic , which has so far vaccinated more than 2,100 people, is also a testament to the power of partnerships and collaborations that have helped shape the University’s response to the ongoing public health crisis.
• Washington: 16,946 (+36)
Philadelphia had the most cases newly reported Saturday with 382, followed by Allegheny (271), Bucks (171), Montgomery (165) and York (159).
Deaths
The Pennsylvania Department of Health added 35 deaths to bring the state’s total to 26,253.
Of the 35 deaths newly reported Saturday, 34 are from April and one is from December. It’s the fifth straight day the state has added a death in December.
There were 954 covid-19 deaths in April, making it the seventh deadliest month, surpassing March (937).
The Allegheny County Health Department reported no new deaths to leave its total at 1,867. The state health department, meanwhile, reported two deaths in Allegheny County to bring its total to 1,899. The discrepancy in reporting between the two health departments has yet to be fully explained.
This story is from The Pulse, a weekly health and science podcast.
I remember very clearly the day I stopped totally trusting my city’s health commissioner. It was the last Tuesday in July of 2020, during a virtual press conference I was attending.
Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health had been doing pandemic briefings for months at that point. Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley always popped up to do his rundown of the state of the virus for the week. This press conference was no different.
Except after the numbers and talk about trends, Farley said this: “So in summary, the second wave of the epidemic has now reached Philadelphia.”
Councilmembers of Philadelphia’s Public Safety and Inmate advocates question the vaccination efforts of the Department of Prisons
The Covid-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on vaccination attempts being done by the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. This spotlight was shone at a Joint Committee meeting of the Philadelphia City Council on March 17 as they questioned the testing efforts of the prison department, as well as Covid-19 positivity rates in the prisons.
Philadelphia Department of Prisons releases a daily census of positivity rates and mortalities. There’s about 1136 adult males in the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center (PICC) with COVID-19 according to the Department of Public Health’s website. In addition, there’s 32 juvenile males in Riverside Correctional Facility (RCF) with COVID-19. Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility (CFCF) has the highest positivity rates in the PDP system with 2326 male prisoners with COVID-19.