COVID hospitalizations up by over 100 in 10 days in Delaware

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DOVER — As Delaware’s COVID-19 levels continue to rise, 80% of new COVID-19 hospitalizations are not fully vaccinated, according to data via the Delaware Division of Public Health.

For the week of Nov. 22-28, the most recent available dataset, 91 of the 114 individuals newly hospitalized with the virus were not fully vaccinated. Seventy-two percent of new positive cases for the same time period also occurred in people not fully vaccinated — 1,667 of 2,306 new cases.

Delaware’s COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased by more than 100 within the last 10 days, going from 159 on Nov. 25 up to 271 in DPH’s most recent update, which reflects data as of Friday at 6 p.m.

That is the highest mark for hospitalizations since Sept. 11. Of the current 271 hospitalized, DPH said 30 cases are considered critical.

DPH also reported 776 new positive cases of the virus in Saturday’s update — the most in one day since Jan. 16 when there were 965.

There have been 7,633 breakthrough cases in Delaware as of Friday, which represents 1.4% of 549,333 fully vaccinated individuals. A breakthrough case is defined as testing positive for COVID-19 after an individual has been fully vaccinated for two weeks or more.

DPH confirmed this weekend no cases of the omicron variant have been found in Delaware. Both Maryland and Pennsylvania have found at least one case of the new variant so far.

The state’s most recent seven-day rolling average for percentage of positive tests is at 8.1%, which is above the World Health Organization’s recommended mark of 5%. That figure is as of Wednesday at 6 p.m. due to a two-day lag to account for the time delay between the date of the test and the date DPH receives the test result.

Meanwhile, the number of in-person contagious COVID-19 cases in Delaware K-12 public schools was the second-lowest it has been all year over a recent seven-day period. DPH reported 135 cases among students and 28 among staff for the week of Nov. 20-26, which was Thanksgiving week so fewer students were in schools throughout the week.

It represented 0.1% of the estimated 141,040 public school students this year. The only week with a lower mark was the first week the state began tracking this data, Sept. 4 when there were 130 in-person contagious cases, .09% of all students.

The state has recorded a total of 3,532 in-person contagious cases among students this school year — 2.5% of all public school students. An additional 693 cases have been reported among staff.

The data, published on the state’s coronavirus website, is for all Delaware public schools, including 19 districts and 23 charter schools, which are part of the public school system. Private school data is still not available.

In-person contagious cases are defined as “persons who were present at school as far back as 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms (or test date if no symptoms). The source of infection of these cases cannot be attributed to schools, nor is it known that they are the source of infection to others in schools.”

Follow @TimMastroDSN on Twitter.

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