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The Wilkes-Barre ZIP code of 18702 remained Luzerne County&rsquo;s COVID-19 hot spot this week, though Hazleton&rsquo;s 18201 was a close second. From Oct. 16 to Friday, the state reported 59 new cases in the former and 50 in the latter.
				It was a bad week all around, with the state reporting a total of 417 new cases in Luzerne County &mdash; only 20 fewer than the total for the two week period from Oct 2 to Oct. 16. Many individual ZIP codes similarly had increases in this one week that rivaled the number of new cases in the previous two weeks combined.
				Kingston&rsquo;s code of 18704, for example, had 32 new cases this week, compared to 33 for the two weeks from Oct. 2 to Oct 16. The Pittston code of 18704 had 29 cases this week compared to 21 cases during the two prior weeks. And the Nanticoke code of 18634 had 26 new cases this week, when the total from the two weeks was 11.
				The Dallas code of 18612, which enjoyed a summer registering few to no new cases most weeks, had 25 new cases this past week. The total for the two weeks from Oct. 2 to 16 was 30.
				All told, 10 of the 41 ZIP codes all or partially in Luzerne County monitored by the Times Leader had no new case this week. another four had only one case, and 15 codes had between fewer than 10 cases but more than 1.
				The Noxen code of 18636, which is almost entirely in Wyoming County but juts a small amount into Luzerne County, demonstrated a quirk in the state&rsquo;s reporting. For many weeks it has reported no new cases, but this week there were eight. That doesn&rsquo;t mean it went from zero to eight in one week, though. The state &ldquo;redacts&rdquo; data for codes that have one to four cases, reporting an R rather than a number. The Noxen code had been registering an R for most of the summer and into autumn, meaning it could have had up to four cases any time in those many weeks, which suggests the actual number of new cases this week was probably four.

Wilkes-Barre ZIP code of 18702 remains COVID-19 hot spot