While daily cases counts of COVID-19 are dropping overall in Allegheny County, Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen reported the first case of the UK variant in the county.
"This week the Pennsylvania Department of Health notified us that they had detected the UK variant in a sample sent for testing from Allegheny County," said Bogen during a press conference. "The Allegheny County Health Department completed case investigation and contact tracing with this person and learned that this person does not know how they contracted the variant."
She says this is the first and only case of the variant in the county but thinks it was probably in the county for some time.
Related
She said the news of this new variant should serve as a reinforcement that everyone should double-down on mitigation efforts to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Bogen says the daily COVID-19 case count is about 200 per day and positivity rate in the county is at 6%.
Related
The Department has started vaccinating senior citizens living in housing authority buildings.
According to Bogen, residents in a Homestead facility were vaccinated in their building Wednesday as part of a larger program the county is developing.
"The team went to the building earlier this week and handed out information about the vaccine and registration. Today they registered people on site and distributed the vaccine to those in the building."
The vaccination team will continue to vaccinate seniors at county housing authority buildings, based on supplies of the vaccine from the state.
Related
The program is a pilot program that started with the housing authority with the plans to expand to other low-income, subsidized senior living facilities.
She said supplies of the coronavirus vaccine are still very limited in the county and throughout the state.