‘Viruses don’t care’: Rural Pennsylvania ravaged by spike in COVID-19 cases
President Donald Trump captured the vote in most rural Pennsylvania counties, including places where cases of COVID-19 have been spiking since September.
But Centre County, which is among the rural counties where cases of the disease have been rising, went for former Vice President Joe Biden, and so did urban Allegheny County, according to preliminary election results, suggesting little connection between what is being described as the second wave of the disease and political affiliation.
“Viruses don’t care about political parties,” said Dr. Rob Gillio, a physician and entrepreneur who lives in State College, the biggest borough in Centre County. “They only care that you are human and the quality of the environment where you live.”
The uptick in the number of cases in Centre County began with the start of the fall semester and the return of students to Penn State University, Gillio said.
Spiking COVID-19 cases in rural Pennsylvania have shut nursing homes to visitors and restricted hospital visitation. Incidence rates topping 100 cases per 100,000 population for two consecutive weeks or a test positivity rate exceeding 10% also prompt the state Department of Education to recommend closing schools and shifting students to online learning, but not all districts follow the guideline.
And it’s not just rural counties feeling the pain of a second wave of the disease. Case counts in Allegheny County were also up in recent weeks as statewide records were broken for the number of daily cases.
Bradford County, population 60,323, located along the Pennsylvania-New York border, continues to lead the state in incidence of COVID-19 cases, according to newly released Pennsylvania Health Department data.
The incidence of COVID-19 in Bradford was 335.3 cases per 100,000 population. The number of tests that came back positive there for the week ending Thursday was 12.4%.
In second place was Huntingdon County with 332.1 COVID-19 cases, followed by Blair County, 266.1 cases; Mifflin County, 257.5 cases; and Bedford County, 238.7 cases, all per 100,000 population.
Bradford County has been getting pounded with among the highest reported incidence in the state for weeks. On Oct. 1, the county reported 176 COVID-19 cases, according to the Health Department. By Oct. 29, the county’s case count had jumped to 833 cases, then to 1,054 just eight days later.
Many of the cases involved nursing home residents: six facilities reported total infections of 163 residents, 50 staff members and a dozen deaths.
“This virus is unrelenting,” Janet Tomcavage, chief nursing executive at Danville, Montour County-based Geisinger Health System and a member of a rapid response team that has worked to tamp down infections at nursing homes, said during a briefing Friday.
Health Department spokesperson Nate Wardle said the department was continuing to look for ways to stop the spread of the infection.
“As Pennsylvanians continue to make sacrifices each day to keep themselves and others safe, the department is working each day to determine what steps are necessary to best protect Pennsylvanians,” he wrote in a statement.
The 107-bed Bradford Regional Medical Center, which was founded in 1887, began restricting visitors in mid-October because of the sharp increase in cases. So did Geisinger Health hospitals.
Bradford Regional CEO Jeff Zewe was not available for comment Friday.
Geisinger, a health system and insurer, operates 13 hospitals in rural central Pennsylvania and elsewhere, including one in Schuylkill County, population 141,359. There, 197.8 cases per 100,000 population were reported as of Nov. 1, according to the Health Department. The positive test rate in the county was 11.1%.
At a news conference Friday, Geisinger President and CEO Dr. Jaewon Ryu said COVID-19 cases began rising at its hospitals in early September.
During a summer lull in the outbreak in July and August, the system had between 10 and 30 patients with COVID.
In the last few weeks though, Geisinger hospitals have been admitting a COVID-19 positive patient about every two hours, as the number of hospitalized people with the disease jumped into the mid-90s, Ryu said. Moreover, the patients weren’t fitting a popular profile of people who get sick with the disease.
Only between 15% and 20% of Geisinger’s COVID-19 patients were from nursing homes; 41% were under age 65.
“There’s a belief out there that these are mostly nursing home patients,” Ryu said. But the reality “kind of debunks the myth that all of these patients are old.”