evidence: More than 394,400 Western New Yorkers have contracted Covid-19 since March 2020 and 4,368 have died of it. 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 2021, as vaccinations ramped 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 that continued into the fall. The number of new cases dropped in early December but then shot back up around the holiday, reaching the highest levels since the start of the pandemic. The number of daily reported cases topped 2,000 three times in the last week of the 2021. But the number of new cases has since dropped sharply. [...] 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.