Pittsfield Hospitalization Rates Not Spiking During Omicron Surge

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The omicron variant has presented a historically high spike in cases but hospitalization rates are not so far surging in response.

During a COVID-19 update at Tuesday's City Council meeting, Director of Public Health Andy Cambi reported that there are 25 people hospitalized at Berkshire Medical Center for the virus and that a large number of these patients are unvaccinated.

"While we have seen the rise in cases tremendously with omicron, the hospital census has remained in the lower end compared to what we saw before," he said, comparing the current rates to those at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Cambi displayed a chart that compared normalized hospital distribution between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in Pittsfield. With the omicron variant, the unvaccinated rank much higher on the chart than those who are.  

Currently, 73 percent of the city's residents are fully vaccinated and 85 percent have had at least one dose (this may include the one-dose J&J vaccine, which counts as fully vaccinated).

"So what we can make of this is that receiving the vaccine has done a lot to help protect our community," Cambi said. "We can see that in the data that we have here from the hospital census."

Pittsfield's average case rate per 100,000 is 244.9, a metric that has sharply risen since Christmas. The positivity rate is 18.8 percent, close to the highest positivity rate of 19.2 that occurred in early April 2020.

There are currently 716 estimated actively contagious cases in the city and there were 114 new cases on Monday. This is an improvement from Friday when there were 163 new cases, the highest daily case rate in the history of the pandemic.

Hospitals across the state this week were preparing to differentiate reporting on novel coronavirus cases based on whether patients were admitted because of or related to COVID-19 or were admitted for unrelated reasons and tested positive. All hospital admissions are being tested for the virus. 

1Berkshire Marks Halfway Point of Pandemic-Altered Blueprint

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
05:22PM / Monday, June 10, 2024

1Berkshire President & CEO Jonathan Butler notes how much the world has changed since the release of the 2.0 version of the blueprint five years ago.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — 1Berkshire's blueprint for economic development was adaptable when it needed to be and today, paves steps for a post-pandemic Berkshire County.

1Berkshire marked five years since the Berkshire Blueprint 2.0 release with a progress report May 30 on the plan shaped by the pandemic's impact on the region and beyond.

President and CEO Jonathan Butler noted that it was an intentional decision to deliver the update from the Berkshire Innovation Center, which was being built when the blueprint was released.

"On the one hand, it's hard to believe that it's been over five years since (Vice President of Economic Development Benjamin Lamb) and myself stood in front of nearly 300 people at the Colonial Theatre attempting to explain this whole framework that we call the Berkshire Blueprint," he said.

"But on the other hand, 2019 is in the very distant past. We've seen the world change, the region change, and plans change. We've lived and worked through a pandemic that consumed nearly three years of our lives and continues to influence it today. Yet, despite all of that, we stand here today at the halfway point of a regional strategy that is still very active but like each of us, has had to pivot, adjust, and rethink its priorities."

Five years ago, the "last thing on our mind was the thought of a life-altering pandemic," he said, but that is exactly where they were a year later with the Berkshire Blueprint 2.0. The 10-year plan was released in February 2019 after two years of planning and adjusted to the pandemic after its onset.

"The impacts of the pandemic are vast, complicated, and will continue to influence how business is done in the Berkshires and beyond for years, if not decades, to come," Butler said. "And that was something that we did not plan for."

Lamb noted that recovery and resiliency really became the focus post-pandemic.