BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – Health officials in Erie County and the University at Buffalo fear a fourth wave of COVID-19 is on the horizon due to the fall season and colder temperatures.
In an update Friday morning, Dr. Peter Winkelstein, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the university and Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein stressed their desires to see more people get vaccinated and to wear a mask.
"One of the things that's worrisome is that it's going to get cold again," Winkelstein said. "We know that come the fall it's going to get cold and people are going to move indoors. That seems to have been what caused the wave we had last fall."
There are significantly more people in a hospital today than a year ago. As of Wednesday, there were 163 people in a Western New York hospital. There were 31 people in a hospital on the same date last year. The difference is due to the Delta variant, which is more transmissible and account for virtually all new cases in Western New York.
The overwhelming majority of those who have been hospitalized are unvaccinated or immunocompromised.
"The vaccinations are helping for sure," Winkelstein said. "The vaccine, I think, is keeping the wave from being much higher. The rise in this (Delta) wave has risen more slowly than previous waves and I think that's due to the effect of the vaccines. They work. We need to get everybody vaccinated now so that they're fully vaccinated by the time the fall comes."
Dr. Burstein said there were 217 new cases of COVID-19 among those tested in Erie County. The county is currently testing at 139 cases per 100,000 residents over a 7-day period. This means Erie County is classified as a community with high transmission, according to the CDC metric.
From July through early September, 50 Erie County residents have died from COVID-19. Of those, 11 of them were under the age of 60.
"All of those who died of COVID-19 under the age of 60 (during that time) were not fully vaccinated," Burstein said. "We all have shared goals. No matter what you think about vaccines and masks, we all want to get out of the pandemic. Our ticket out of the pandemic in the long run is to get vaccinated."
