Three more county residents have been reported to have died from COVID-19, but the state continued to show a downward trend Friday in the number of new cases.

According to Friday's report by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, those deaths accompanied 40 new confirmed cases in the county.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 8,223 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 325 have died from the virus.

In the state's report, it was noted that 4,052 of the 9,643 new confirmed cases reported Friday were antigen tests that were on backlog.

“These are cases that had their specimens collected over a week ago,” said April Hutcheson, a spokeswoman for the department.

Taking this into consideration, the remaining 5,591 test results continue to show a downward trend in new cases added each day.

The seven-day average for the state has been about 4,870 per day, including Friday's addition of antigen tests, and it is about 4,291 without those backlogged tests.

Both numbers are well below the average from January, which saw about 6,414 new confirmed cases per day.

Also Friday, Butler Health System reported the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has remained roughly the same.

Butler Memorial Hospital is treating 30 inpatients, which is one less than Wednesday's report. Five of those patients are being treated in the intensive care unit, and the hospital reported one death to the Department of Health Thursday.

Clarion Hospital has two inpatients, an increase of one, but neither is in the intensive care unit and only one has been confirmed to have the virus.

Vaccines

BHS also announced it will resume vaccinations as supplies last after receiving a shipment Thursday.

“Scheduling will remain open until all available doses are scheduled,” said Melissa Forester, spokeswoman for BHS. “It will then be closed until further vaccine delivery.”

At the state level, vaccine distributions continue with an estimated cumulative receipt of 1.8 million doses allocated to the state over the past seven weeks through Saturday. Of those, 930,150 were designated for first-dose recipients and the remaining 884,700 account for second doses.

Through Thursday, 893,256 doses have been administered statewide. State officials provided a breakdown of those totals Friday. Of those, 719,928 were first doses and 173,328 were second doses.

State officials repeated Friday that the data for vaccine administration falls multiple days behind the allocations because of the time it takes to distribute, as well as because of lags in reporting data by the federal pharmacy partners that are handling the vaccinations in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

The state will receive 160,000 first doses this week and an unspecified number of second doses next week.

According to Hutcheson, while the number of first-dose distribution saw a slight bump in recent weeks, it pales in comparison to the 700,000 requests for first doses received by health systems this week.

“We know that we have a very high demand and not enough of a supply,” she said. “We know that will continue until more vaccine is made.”

Hutcheson said the state will continue to request its full allotment from the federal government.

She said the issues holding up distribution are production and the need for second doses.

“If there is a single-dose vaccine that's approved, that could be a game-changer for us,” she said.

In a news conference Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said he would be “surprised” if it took more than two weeks for a decision to be made on Johnson & Johnson's request for emergency approval.