Bucks Co. Residents Should Wear Masks Indoors As Cases Rise: CDC

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — Bucks County is one of 25 counties in Pennsylvania that now has high or substantial COVID-19 spread, according to the Centers for Disease Control's most recent data released Tuesday.

This substantial spread status means both vaccinated and unvaccinated people in Bucks County should be wearing masks when indoors, the CDC says.

In Bucks, a county with a population of 628,000, 80.2 percent of adults are vaccinated. Recent rises in COVID-19 cases are primarily attributed to the more-contagious delta variant, which is responsible for an estimated 65.6 percent of all new cases in Pennsylvania currently, according to CDC statistics.

Here is how Bucks County fared, metric-by-metric, in the most recent Department of Health data for the week of July 23 - July 29:

• Confirmed Cases: The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bucks County jumped by 72 over this past week. The state counted 223 new cases between July 23 and July 29, compared to 151 the week before and 88 the week before that.
• Rate Per 100,000 People: The county's incidence rate of the coronavirus spiked as well, with 35.5 cases per 100,000 people as opposed to the prior week's 22.4. Like confirmed cases, this number has been rising recently.
• Positivity Rate: The rate of people who got COVID-19 PCR tests and tested positive in Bucks County was 3 percent last week, up from 2.6 percent the week prior. In times of more intense spread, officials had been hoping for rates below 3 percent to signal slowing spread.
• Average Daily Hospitalizations: The daily number of hospitalizations is actually down from July 16 - July 22, when it had been 11. Last week, 9.4 people were hospitalized daily on average.
• Patients On Ventilators: The number of patients on ventilators is down by .1 since the previous week, for an average of 1 Bucks patient hospitalized for COVID-19 on a ventilator last week.
• Emergency Room Visits: The percentage of hospital emergency room visits attributed to COVID-19 in Bucks County has increased to 1 percent, up from .8 percent the week prior.

Residents can find more information on vaccinations in the county here.

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