COVID-19 update: Hospitalizations and deaths rise, as test positivity rate remains steady

COVID-19 hospitalizations spiked 35% in Suffolk last week compared to the week before, as daily new hospital admissions rose 27% on a seven-day average. Patients being treated in intensive care units also increased to a daily average of 24 from an average of 15 the week before.

Peconic Bay Medical Center has seen an uptick in COVID admissions, Executive Director Amy Loeb said in an interview last week. Where there had been one or two COVID in-patients in the months since the winter surge, there were eight hospitalized for COVID late last week, Loeb said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon.

“There are patients in the ICU, some intubated,” Loeb said.

“We are seeing an increase of patients coming in to the ER for COVID-19 evaluation,” Loeb said. “We are seeing younger people coming in positive, as well,” she said.

There were 152 new COVID-19 admissions to Suffolk hospitals from Aug. 8 to Aug. 14, according to data published by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services — an average of 22 new admissions per day in that seven-day period, compared to an average of 16 per day the previous week. On average over the past week, there were 126 COVID patients in Suffolk hospitals each day, with an average of 24 people per day in hospital intensive care units and an average of 10 people per day intubated. There were 112 COVID patients discharged from Suffolk hospitals in the same period.

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COVID test positivity results in Suffolk remained steady at an average of 3.8% in the past seven days, the same seven-day average testing percent-positive rate as the week before.There were 2,430 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Suffolk County in the seven-day period ending Aug. 14, according to New York State Department of Health data.

The test percent-positive rate was significantly higher among school-age children in the Riverhead Central School District. There were six new confirmed cases of COVID-19 from Aug. 8 to Aug. 14 among children ages 5 to 17 who reside in the Riverhead Central School District, according to state health department data. There were 90 COVID-19 tests administered to children in that age group in the district during that seven-day period, resulting in a test positivity rate of 6.6%.

The state does not report testing data specific to towns, or hamlets within towns; it reports only the total number of confirmed cases for each town. There were 33 new confirmed COVID cases in the Town of Riverhead in the seven-day period from Aug. 8 to Aug. 14. That number fell from 38 new cases in the preceding seven-day period. Twenty of the 33 new cases were in the two hamlets with the lowest vaccination rates in the township: 13 in the hamlet of Riverhead and seven in the hamlet of Calverton.

Suffolk’s seven-day average percent-positive rate is the highest since early April, when the region emerged from the fall-winter surge. The percent-positive seven-day average stayed under 1% in May, June and the first half of July, but began to rise again after the delta variant of SARS-CoV2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, became the prevalent strain of the virus circulating in New York.

There were nine COVID-19 fatalities in Suffolk County Aug. 8-14, compared to two the week before, according to county health department data.

There were 6,365 new first doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in Suffolk County from Aug. 9 to Aug. 15, according to data released by the Suffolk County health department. The health department yesterday reported 64.8% of Suffolk’s total population of 1,481,093 people has received at least one dose and 58.3% of the total population is fully vaccinated.

According to the health department, 521,312 Suffolk residents remain unvaccinated, including 205,125 children under age 12, who are not yet eligible for the vaccine.