71 new deaths reported statewide from COVID-19
Pennsylvania reported an additional 71 deaths from COVID-19 on Friday as officials provided clarification and additional details on plans to ease restrictions on businesses and other containment measures for some regions in the coming weeks.
Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said the increase brings total deaths statewide to 1,492. Another 1,499 cases brought the total so far to 38,652.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration said two days earlier that the state is going to evaluate conditions in the northwestern and north-central areas of the state with the expectation to allow the first phase of a process officials intend to use to allow counties to return to more normal routines. Some measures – including a recommendation for people to keep working from home and a ban on large gatherings – would remain in place for the initial stage of the transition.
The greatest numbers of coronavirus infections have been in Philadelphia and other eastern counties, but have been found in all 67 counties. Levine declined to provide a timeline on exactly when eastern counties can reopen, saying the determination would be made based on the trajectory of the outbreak in that part of the state.
In Washington County, four new cases brought the total so far to 96, while deaths remained at two. An additional case in Greene brought the total to 25, with no deaths there.
Levine said 2,746 people were in hospitals across the state.
During his remarks on Friday, Wolf said that officials would take a holistic approach to the decisions on which regions could reopen and how quickly, rather than depend on a single, hard-and-fast criterion. For example, the potential for people to travel from counties that were still on lockdown because of the outbreak into neighboring ones was one of the factors that officials would consider in their decisions.
“This is why the objective criteria have to be weighed with some subjective criteria,” said the governor. “Right now, with the statewide shelter-in-place order, the statistics are one thing. When people start moving from county to county or even state to state, those numbers might change and they might change fairly quickly.
“We have to be ready to retrace our steps if that happens,” he added.
The governor acknowledged the challenges the situation posed for many Pennsylvanians, including mass unemployment that’s resulted in 1.6 million claims for state jobless benefits so far. Wolf said the volume of applications meant long wait times for responses.
He said staff from other parts of the Department of Labor & Industry were assigned to help process the additional claims. Other additional staff included experienced retirees from the agency and 100 new hires.
He said 90,000 self-employed people, contractors and others who are not normally eligible applied for unemployment in the first week of a new program making them eligible.
“We have made changes to help us meet the demand,” he said.