Onondaga County reports four Covid deaths; cases and hospitalizations fall

Medical workers at St. Josephs hospital in Syracuse get their vaccine shots for the coronavirus Dec 23, 2020.

In this December 2020 file photo, doctors and nurses gather before administering Covid-19 vaccines to medical workers at St. Joseph's Health Hospital, in Syracuse.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Four Onondaga County residents died of Covid-19 over the past three days, County Executive Ryan McMahon said today.

In more encouraging news, the number of new cases, Covid patients in the hospital and people in intensive care all dropped over the past week compared to the previous week.

In a tweet, McMahon said the four people who died were a man in his 50s, a man in his 70s, and two women in their 80s.

The county has recorded eight Covid deaths over the past week, similar to the two previous seven-day periods. So far this month, 11 Covid patients have died.

McMahon said the number of Covid patients in the hospital continues to fall, with 78 people hospitalized today. That’s down from 126 in the hospital just 10 days ago.

The number of Covid patients sick enough to need intensive care has fallen to six today, the lowest level in nearly two weeks.

McMahon said the county confirmed 822 cases of Covid-19 over the past three days. Over the past seven days, there have been 2,064 cases confirmed, a drop of 13% from the previous week’s 2,376 cases.

It can take weeks for a person who is infected with the virus to get sick enough to be hospitalized and die. That’s why deaths often stay steady or rise even as the case and hospitalization numbers drop.

Central New York was hit hard by two strains of the omicron BA.2 variant, which peaked in April and are on their way down here. The strains have spread to other parts of New York, where eight of the state’s 10 regions now have higher rates of cases than Central New York does. Only the North Country is lower.

Upstate New York continues to be the Covid hot spot of the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending residents wear masks indoors in 36 counties in New York state, including all of Central New York, where transmission of the coronavirus is considered high.

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