According to the CDC, Erie, Crawford, and Warren county are all considered places with high community levels of Covid-19.

While sunshine and warmer weather may mean more time outdoors, it doesn't mean Covid-19 is slowly down.


Emily Shears, the Director of Operations for UPMC Hamot explained, "The past two years we have certainly seen more of quiet time during the late spring and summer, during this year with the Omicron variants being able to re-infect people that have had Covid previously and also the transmissibility being high, we are seeing that spread is still occurring."


Hospital officials said the latest surge is due to the variant rapidly spreading.
Dr. Chris Clark, the President of AHN Saint Vincent said, "We have definitely seen an uptick compared to the previous months as its been well recognized, this latest strain is highly contagious, but fortunately less veritable, so we have seen more cases, the number of people being tested, the positivity rate is up and it's been pretty consistent over the last four weeks, but certainly not the numbers of Covid cases we have seen in the previous surges."


Dr. Clark said while they are treating patients for Covid-19, most of their cases are mild, and not as severe. "The patients we are seeing in the hospital that are testing positive for Covid are actually here more incidentally with Covid, that's in general by the way. Most of our patients that are in the hospital that have Covid are actually here for other reasons", explained Dr. Clark.


Like AHN Saint Vincent, UPMC Hamot is also treating patients with Covid-19 and hospital officials said those patients have also had mild or moderate cases of the virus. 
"We are seeing a mild increase in cases right now but nothing close to the increase we have seen in the past, so we certainly keep an eye on that as the numbers in the community start to increase, we do expect to see slight increases in hospitalizations", said Shears.