• Wolf OKs National Guard help for COVID-19 vaccination efforts,

Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law Wednesday legislation that will allow the Pennsylvania National Guard to assist in the distribution and administration of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The National Guard will work with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency to develop, establish and operate vaccination sites across the state.

The bill, authored by state Rep. Tim O’Neal, R-Washington, says that within 45 days of the legislation passing, the governor must submit a report to the General Assembly that outlines how the guard has been “integrated into the state’s vaccine plan.”

This new legislation comes as Pennsylvania added an additional 2,577 new cases of COVID-19 and 69 new deaths to its total.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the state has had 938,411 people test positive for the virus and 24,169 have died as a result.

In Allegheny County, 186 new cases and 17 new deaths were recorded by the county Health Department.

The county’s newest cases come from tests taken between Feb. 21 and March 2, though only one test is more than a week old, the Health Department said.

Those who have recently tested positive range in age from 7 months to 94 years old and have a median age of 38.

Allegheny County has had a total of 77,239 cases of COVID19 since the pandemic began last March.

The county’s percent positivity for the past seven days has gone up to 5.9% from 5.5% during the previous seven days, according to the Health Department’s website.

“We aren’t out of the woods yet,” county Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen said during the board of health’s monthly meeting Wednesday. “It is too soon to take your masks off.”

The county’s average number of cases per day for the past week has also gone up to about 170 cases, compared with the previous week’s 155, although hospitalizations and deaths are continuing to decline, according to Dr. Bogen.

The 17 new deaths occurred between Nov. 23 and Feb. 27. Only one death each occurred in November

and December and the rest were from February, according to the Allegheny County Health Department.

The deaths ranged in age, with six occurring in people ages 60 to 79, and 11 occurring among people in their 80s and 90s.

Three of the deaths were associated with long-term care facilities, the Health Department said.

As of March 2, the state has distributed over 2.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Allegheny County has received about 360,000 doses of the vaccine, Dr. Bogen said.

During the board meeting, Dr. Bogen outlined what some of the biggest challenges with the vaccine are. She included vaccine distribution, registration systems, vaccine hesitancy and the equity of vaccine distribution on that list.

“I think we have a plan to address all of them,” she said.

She specifically noted that she believes vaccine distribution is “improving,” as the state works to give advance notice on how many doses the county will receive each week.

The Health Department also has plans to continue to open mass vaccination sites, such as the ones in Monroeville and Castle Shannon, as more doses of the vaccine become available.