Vermont had “low” Covid-19 community levels over the past week, the state Department of Health reported Wednesday.
The number of people admitted to the hospital for Covid ticked up slightly, from 37 to 43 in the past week, according to the department. But the number of patients in Vermont hospitals with the virus hit 26 on Wednesday, the lowest level since mid-November. That includes seven patients in intensive care.
The department reported 346 Covid cases in the past week, similar to the 350 cases reported the week before. In general, Vermont has reported between 375 and 525 Covid cases per week since the beginning of December.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday that Rutland County had “high” Covid levels. It’s the first time any county has reported high levels since January. Bennington County had “medium” Covid levels for the fourth week in a row, while the state’s 12 other counties had “low” levels, according to the CDC.
CDC community levels are based on Covid case rates, recent Covid admissions and the percent of inpatient beds taken up by Covid patients.
Four additional Covid deaths were reported in the past week, according to the health department, bringing February’s total up to 27, in line with the previous four months. In total, 929 people have died of Covid in Vermont since the beginning of the pandemic.
Health department archives Covid datasets
The health department told VTDigger that it would stop updating multiple Covid datasets that live separately from its weekly reports beginning next week.
The department ended its daily Covid data dashboard in May 2022 in favor of a weekly report that summarizes weekly cases, hospital admissions and other benchmarks of Covid’s outlook in Vermont.
But it had continued to publish Covid datasets that offered different metrics for understanding the virus’ impact, such as the number of cases per day and the number of people currently hospitalized for Covid.
Only one dataset — the number of people getting Covid vaccine boosters — does not appear to be slated for retirement. (About 34% of Vermonters are up to date on their Covid boosters as of this week, according to the department.)
This follows the retirement of other Covid datasets in February, including PCR test and positivity rate data. Access to the archived data is expected to end May 18, the department said on its website.
Going forward, data that is being still updated will be included in the weekly summaries, according to department spokesperson Ben Truman.