Westmoreland County posts record 8 new covid-related deaths

A day after setting a record for new coronavirus cases, Westmoreland County set a single-day record Friday for covid-related deaths with eight.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced the deaths along with 189 new cases of the coronavirus.

The new deaths bring November’s total to 55, which is one shy of the total number of covid-related deaths the county saw in the first seven months of the virus. In October, the county recorded 47 deaths. To date, Westmoreland has 158 covid deaths.

Westmoreland County blew past the 7,000-case mark with the latest batch of covid cases, bringing the total to 7,097 to date.

Among Friday’s new batch of cases, 111 were confirmed from a PCR test — a test positivity rate of 20.56%. On Thursday, the county recorded a new case count of 259.

The county set a record seven-day case average of 191, with 1,340 total cases in a seven-day span, also a record.

According to the state’s covid-19 tracking website, of the 76 Westmoreland County residents in the hospital with the virus, 10 of them are in intensive care units and three of them on ventilators. State officials report there are 88 operational ventilators in the county, with seven (8%) currently in use for all illnesses.

Westmoreland was one of 20 counties in the state to post three-digit new cases counts Friday. It was the 11th straight day the county posted a new case count over 100.

To date, there have been 5,669 PCR-test confirmed cases of covid-19 in Westmoreland County. A total of 59,625 individuals have tested negative for the virus.