Vermont reported its 60th death due to Covid-19 Wednesday, as the state tackles a surge in cases this month.
The state Department of Health reported 51 new cases of the virus, fewer than the record-breaking totals of previous days, but still far higher than the average during the summer and in October.
So far, the number of deaths during the surge has remained low. Prior to the report today, the health department had not reported a death since Nov. 5, and the state has often gone a month or more without reporting a single death.
However, state officials said Tuesday that hospitalizations from the virus have been rising and may increase in the coming weeks. As of Wednesday, 17 people were hospitalized with the virus and one patient was in the ICU.
Dr. Mark Levine, head of the health department, said Tuesday the medical system has improved its ability to fight the virus since the spring when the most deaths occurred in Vermont.
“We know so much more about people who are in the hospital,” he said. The state also has approval to use monoclonal antibody treatment.
The full death toll of the latest surge may not be immediately apparent. Deaths can lag behind cases, as it takes time for someone to develop severe complications of the disease and succumb to it.
What we know about who dies of Covid
The state has not yet released any details about the most recent death.
However, VTDigger on Tuesday confirmed one new Covid-19 death at Rutland Health and Rehab, the site of an ongoing outbreak. Richard Feifer, chief medical officer for Genesis, the national company that owns the facility, said one resident connected to the outbreak had died. The Vermont Department of Health dashboard shows that the sole death in the past two weeks was in Rutland County.
The health department provides generalized data on victims of the virus, allowing people to get a sense of who the victims of Covid may be.
People who die of Covid tend to be older. The vast majority who have died were 70 or above, while the most cases occurred in those 20 to 29 years old.
More than half of deaths — 57% — were men, according to health department data, even though cases were evenly distributed between genders.
Half of all deaths occurred in long-term-care facilities, which were the site of several outbreaks in the spring.
It is unclear how pre-existing conditions may have affected people who died of Covid. While the health department reports 47% of Covid patients had some sort of pre-existing condition, that rate is not necessarily higher than the percentage of people with those conditions in the general population, particularly among older Vermonters.
Read VTDigger’s series of remembrances of Vermonters lost to Covid-19. If you’ve lost a loved one to the virus and would like to share a remembrance, please get in touch.
This story was updated at 1:25 p.m. to include information about the confirmed death at Rutland Health and Rehab on Tuesday.
