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Luzerne County had 1,195 new confirmed coronavirus cases last week.
				That&rsquo;s still a lot compared to months ago. For example, there were 86 new cases reported the last week of August.
				However, it&rsquo;s an improvement from two weeks ago, when the county had logged 2,106 new cases, or 911 more, according to the state health department&rsquo;s early warning dashboard posted at <a href="https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Monitoring-Dashboard.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.health.pa.gov</a>.
				Other positive signs emerged in the latest COVID-19 dashboard reading, which compared last week (Dec. 18-24) to the prior one (Dec. 11-17).
				As a result of fewer new cases, the county&rsquo;s incidence rate, or number of cases per 100,000 residents, decreased from 663 to 376.2 over the two-week period.
				On average, 123.9 county residents were hospitalized daily for coronavirus last week &mdash; a decrease of 5.8 compared to two weeks ago.
				Of those county residents hospitalized, an average 7.6 required ventilators each day, which is slightly lower than the 8.3 reported two weeks ago.
				The county has now dipped below the 20% mark in its positivity rate, or the percentage of diagnostic tests yielding positive results.
				Its new rate is 16.7%, compared to 20.9% two weeks ago and 1.5% when the state launched the early warning dashboard at the end of June.
				Based on the latest numbers, county school districts will remain in the highest classification of &ldquo;substantial&rdquo; community transmission in which remote-only learning is recommended by the state.
				The substantial level is reached when the incidence rate is 100 or above or the positivity rate is 10% or higher &mdash; benchmarks both still amply exceeded in the county.
				The state&rsquo;s early warning update also includes a fifth benchmark &mdash; the percentage of hospital visits tied to coronavirus-like illnesses &mdash; which increased from 0.6% to 1.3% in the county over the two weeks.
				Statewide numbers
				Benchmarks also improved statewide in all categories except ventilator use.
				The number of patients on ventilators daily increased from 711.3 to 744 over the two-week period, the dashboard shows.
				Statewide, there were 47,813 additional confirmed coronavirus cases last week, which was a decrease from the prior week&rsquo;s 58,134 new cases.
				This brought the incidence rate to 373.3 last week, less than the 453.9 reported two weeks ago.
				The statewide positivity rate was 15.1% last week &mdash; a slight improvement from the 15.8% rate the week of Dec. 11 to 17.
				An average 6,080.9 state residents were hospitalized for the coronavirus daily last week, or 59.5 less than the prior week&rsquo;s 6,140.4, the dashboard said.
				The percentage of hospital visits due to coronavirus-like illnesses also decreased from 1.4% to 1.3% over the two-week period.
				In a release this weekend, the state health department put the latest hospitalization statistics in perspective.
				On Christmas Day, there were 5,925 residents hospitalized with COVID-19, which is nearly double the peak in the spring, the state said.
				Providing additional detail, the state said 1,196 of those hospitalized were in the intensive care unit. Most of the patients hospitalized are 65 and older, it said.

Luzerne County shows improvement in latest weekly coronavirus dashboard reading