💌 Love Philly? Sign up for the free Billy Penn email newsletter to get everything you need to know about Philadelphia, every day.
With the arrival of cold weather, Philly’s coronavirus case counts have climbed to new heights, with daily totals surpassing those recorded during the city’s spring wave. The percentage of tests coming back positive is higher than it’s been since May, according to data from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
But the current surge is not happening equally in all parts of the city.
The overall situation is still better than during the pandemic’s scary early peak, when health experts knew little about the disease, and supplies were extremely limited.
However, city hospitals are once again filling up, with more than 700 COVID patients as of the end of November. They’re not yet straining against capacity, but doctors and nurses are putting up flags. Related deaths have started to increase as well, with close to 40 Philadelphia lives lost each week.
Tamping down the fall-winter wave is the goal of Philly’s new restrictions that last through the New Year. A vaccine is on its way, so there’s reason to hope the partial lockdown won’t last long.
Meanwhile, it’s important to stay aware of what’s going on in your community.
The Philly Health Department publishes maps that track incidence by ZIP code, which you can check out below. Each has two versions.
The first shows stats for the entire period of the local epidemic, since March. The second shows the situation over the past two weeks. (What’s special about two weeks? Fourteen days is the outer limit of the incubation period for SARS-CoV-2, according to the CDC.)
Scroll down to view daily updated maps that show two different things: 1) the positivity rate in different Philly ZIP codes, and 2) the per capita rate — the number of positive cases per 10,000 residents in each ZIP.
