CASES CONTINUE TO RISE
Allegheny County deaths near 100
Pennsylvania reports 62 more COVID19 deaths, including seven in the region.
Pennsylvania and Allegheny County again reported new COVID-19 cases and deaths Friday as Gov. Tom Wolf and Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine announced the first round of county reopenings and provided details about the state’s testing and contact tracing plans.
Most of the seven new deaths reported in Western Pennsylvania were in Allegheny County; the county’s total rose by five to 99 deaths. Two additional deaths were reported in Beaver County, which now has had 67. All of the new deaths were residents at nursing homes, according to the state’s figures.
The new figures bring Allegheny County’s total number of cases to 1,319 — 1,272 confirmed and 47 probable — representing a 30-case increase from the previous day. A case is probable “when the person displays symptoms of COVID-19 and has had close contact with a confirmed positive case but has not had a positive test themselves,” according to the county.
Pennsylvania health officials on Friday said there were 62 new COVID-19 deaths and 1,208 new cases reported in the previous 24 hours. Statewide, there have been a total of 2,354 confirmed deaths and 46,971 confirmed and probable cases, according to the latest figures.
As of Friday, 235 Allegheny County residents with COVID-19 have required hospitalization, with 99 of those requiring admission to the Intensive Care Unit and 60 needing mechanical ventilation.
Hospitals across Pennsylvania are reporting 2,677 patients currently receiving treatment for COVID-19, including 561 on ventilators.
The new case and death figures are not distributed evenly across Pennsylvania. The northwest and northcentral regions have consistently seen slower case growth since the start of the pandemic, and both regions average daily new case counts in the high single or low double digits. The southcentral and southwest regions, meanwhile, remain closer to an average of 100 new cases per day each, with the northeast and southeast far outpacing the rest of the state, according to graphics posted on the state health department’s website.
The northwest and northcentral regions will be moved into the less-restrictive yellow category next week, while the rest of the state remains in the red category.
Dr. Levine gave additional details on the state’s efforts to increase contact tracing, including announcing the use of a new alert system, but also said that a full plan would be released soon. Contact tracing — the process of systematically identifying all of an infected person’s contacts and notifying them about their potential exposure so that they can quarantine themselves — is considered by public health experts to be essential to a long-term reopening.
The secretary said that the state would hire new contact tracers “when needed,” but she did not make any commitments as to how many would be needed to manage all of Pennsylvania. She also said that the health department has already begun rolling out contact tracing in the regions moving to yellow.
“I’m sure we will need more and more people as more and more counties go from red to yellow,” Dr. Levine said.
The governor declined to make a commitment to reopen the state by the June 2 primary election, saying that the date is “not a deadline.” He encouraged Pennsylvanians to register to vote online and to vote by mail, and he noted that online registration can be done with a Social Security number if voters are unable to renew their driver’s license due to government office closures.
Here are the positive case counts across Western Pennsylvania as of Friday:
• Allegheny: 1,319 (up 30 from Thursday)
• Armstrong: 52 (up 1)
• Beaver: 426 (up 21)
• Butler: 180 (up 4)
• Cambria: 31 (up 3)
• Clarion: 23 (no change)
• Clearfield: 16 (no change)
• Crawford: 19 (no change)
• Erie: 87 (no change)
• Fayette: 81 (up 1)
• Forest: 7 (no change)
• Greene: 26 (no change)
• Indiana: 63 (no change)
• Jefferson: 4 (no change)
• Lawrence: 65 (no change)
• Mercer: 65 (no change)
• Somerset: 26 (no change)
• Venango: 7 (no change)
• Washington: 116 (up 1)
• Westmoreland: 393 (up 2)