Zip code data shows Hazleton remains county’s COVID-19 hot spot

Looking at just four days of ZIP code data on COVID-19 shows Hazleton clearly remains the county’s hot spot as the pandemic surges.

According to the state department of health, there are 42 ZIP codes that are all or partially inside Luzerne County, though some, such as the 17815 code dubbed “Bloomsburg” stretch only a small finger across county lines. Two codes are labeled “Hazleton,” 18201 and 18202.

From Tuesday through Friday, according to the state, the county overall posted 57 new confirmed cases. Of those, 32 were in the two Hazleton ZIP codes: 23 in 18201 an 9 in 18202. That means the county’s southern most city and neighboring municipalities made up 56% of the total.

By comparison, the data lists four ZIP codes under the label “Wilkes-Barre” — 18701, 18702, 18705 and 18706 — yet those four combined accounted for 13 new cases, or 23%.

The next highest new infection total was 5 in the “Nanticoke” code of 18634. Two other codes had two new cases each: 18249 (“Sugarloaf,” north of Hazleton) and 18655 (“Shickshinny”). The code of “Berwick,” 18603, had one new case, though as the name suggests, that ZIP code stretches well in to Columbia County (at least half of the area is there, from a quick eyeballing of the map).

The “Bloomsburg” ZIP Code had three new cases, but odds are very high those were in Columbia County, where the overwhelming area of the code is. Only a sliver of 17815 juts into Luzerne County, immediately north of Rock Glen, west of Hazleton.

Indeed, while the state does not give data at such a granular level, the Bloomsburg code likely accounts for the fact that there were 57 new cases in the county, yet a total of new cases for all 42 ZIP codes partly or completely in Luzerne County is 60.

So while Luzerne County has seen a recent surge in new cases — the state has reported double-digit increases every day since July 24 — the ZIP code data suggests large swaths of the county are seeing little to no new cases. Of those 42 codes partly or completely in the county, 30 had no new cases since Tuesday.