Cattaraugus County reported 63 new COVID-19 cases over the past two days.
Health department officials reported 34 cases on Thursday on top of 29 cases on Wednesday. The total since March 2020 is now 6,237 cases. There have been 112 deaths.
The month of August ended with 401 residents contracting the coronavirus, up from 308 cases in May, 24 in June and 46 in July. There were two deaths of county residents from COVID-19 last month.
Health department staff are now following 222 active cases, up from 206 cases on Wednesday. There were 13 residents hospitalized on Thursday, up two from the day before. There are 653 people in contact quarantine, unchanged from Wednesday.
Nearly all of the new infections are believed to be the more transmissible Delta variant. Most of the new cases and hospitalizations involve unvaccinated individuals.
The southeast part of the county continues to lead in total infections by a wide margin, 3,251 cases. There have been 1,185 cases in the northeast, 986 in the southwest and 781 in the northwest.
The number of women diagnosed with the coronavirus continues to outpace men, 3,301 to 2,902.
The rising number of cases means the county remain in a red zone of high community transmission of COVID-19, above 100 cases per 100,000 over a week. At last count, there were only four other counties in the state that were not in a red zone.
In a zone of high transmission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends individuals wear mask indoors whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated. This is to help control the spread of the Delta variant.
Public Health Director Dr. Kevin D. Watkins said there are 32,762 residents who have completed their vaccine series and 35,635 people with at least one vaccine dose. That’s 55.9% of the 18 and older population and 46.4 % of the entire population with at least one vaccine dose.
Appointments for vaccinations can be made through the Cattaraugus County website by visiting: https://www.cattco.org/covid-vacc-info or call the COVID-19 Vaccine Hotline at (716) 701-3777.
Thursday’s daily positivity 5.7%, the seven-day rolling average was 5.9% and the 14-day rolling average was 5.5%.
To register for a free COVID-19 diagnostic test through the county health department, go online to:
Watkins said the county’s daily tracker at https://cattaraugus-county-coronavirus-response-cattco.hub.arcgis.com/ provides local COVID-19 data.
