Allegheny County officials won't rule out local mask mandate

Covid-19 cases in Allegheny County remain below the threshold that would trigger the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated mask guidance, but county leaders did not rule out the need for a countywide mask mandate.

“We’re not there yet but, again, stay tuned,” said County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, noting that Allegheny County is not considered a high transmission zone by the CDC’s definition. “You never know what’s going to happen over the next coming weeks.”

The CDC’s covid tracker shows that Allegheny County remains below the high-transmission threshold in both categories: case rates and positivity rate. The case rate, 17 cases per 100,000 people, puts the county in the moderate transmission zone, said Dr. Debra Bogen, the county’s health director. The positivity rate of 2.7% over seven days means, by that standard, the county is in the low transmission zone.

She said, however, that when a county’s numbers put them in different zones, the CDC mask guidance is triggered by the higher zone. For example, if a county’s case rate puts it in the moderate transmission zone but the positivity rate is in the high transmission zone, the county is considered in the high transmission zone.

Bogen and Fitzgerald both stressed that while the changing guidance is frustrating, it is meant to save lives.

“We know our cases are going up,” Fitzgerald said. “We also know that the hospital and death numbers haven’t gone up yet, but we know that’s a lagging indicator.”

The county averaged 56 new cases per day over the past week – a 45.4% increase over the week prior. For perspective, the seven-day total on July 1 was 88 cases, an average of 13 a day that week.

“This is really a pivotal moment in the pandemic, the latest in many pivotal moments,” Bogen said. “The difference between this moment and previous moments is that this time we have the solution. This time we know exactly what we need to do to protect our community.”

That solution, she said, is for everyone who can get vaccinated to do so. She implored residents to do so if for no other reason than to protect those who cannot get the vaccine, including all children under the age of 12.

As for the more contagious and virulent variants of the virus, Bogen said it is difficult to say how widespread they are in this area. Not every test sample, she said, is sent for sequencing. Citing the CDC’s regional statistics, about 66% of cases in the region including Allegheny County involve the delta variant.

“The virus is thriving mostly on the unvaccinated,” she said. “They serve as fertile ground for more variants to emerge.”

Bogen has said a majority of severe cases and deaths both locally and across the country have been in unvaccinated people, though a lack of cooperation when it comes to contact tracing has made determining the exact ratio difficult.

“Unfortunately, we have only been able to reach 50% of cases recently,” she said last week. “This hampers our ability to reduce the spread of infection and makes it difficult for us to track vital data, such as the percentage of cases who are vaccinated or not.

“It’s clear,” she continued, “that the virus is now primarily targeting and thriving among the unvaccinated.”