The five-county region – Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany counties – had reported declining case counts, hospitalizations and deaths since its second-wave peak in January, as vaccinations ramp up across the region and more people acquire immunity. Cases and hospitalizations rose in early spring, peaked in mid-April and declined sharply before beginning an uptick in July.

Hundreds of thousands of Western New Yorkers are now fully vaccinated, causing the daily pace of new vaccinations to slow. 

But disparities in vaccination rates remain. Since the beginning of the rollout, white Western New Yorkers have made up a greater share of the vaccinated than they do of the overall population. Many Western New Yorkers of color have received vaccines at a disproportionately low rate, by comparison.  

Public health experts and officials, both locally and at the federal level, say the effect of the vaccines can be seen across a range of pandemic-tracking metrics, including the “positive test rate," or the share of Covid-19 tests that come back positive.

The number of Western New Yorkers hospitalized with Covid-19 has also plummeted, though it has ticked up in recent weeks. Many of the region's most at-risk people, such as nursing home residents, were vaccinated in the early months of the rollout.

More than 2.3 million New Yorkers have contracted Covid-19 and more than 44,100 have died in the past 17 months. Across the U.S., more than 42 million cases — and 673,929 deaths — have now been reported. 

This page will be updated daily with the latest statistics from the state and county departments of health, as well as new data from The New York Times' national Covid-19 tracking project. You can get the latest updates by bookmarking this page or subscribing to The Buffalo News' daily Covid-19 newsletter.