County to track local cases as COVID-19 count nears 500, death toll at 5
TRENTON » The number of coronavirus cases in Mercer County nearly doubled this week, approaching almost 500, and a New Jersey infectious disease expert expects those figures will sharply rise in the coming weeks.
The county’s figure stood at 484, up from 249 by the end of Monday. Five residents have died from complications of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
They included a Hamilton man, a Trenton woman who lived a Plainsboro nursing home and a Princeton woman in her 90s. The Trentonian also learned Friday that a patient at Trenton Psychiatric Center succumbed to complications of the virus, the first death at one of the state’s four psychiatric hospitals.
It was a tragic first that officials cautioned was coming, but it didn’t make the grim reality easier to accept, Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes said.
“The fact that this occurrence was inevitable makes it no less painful, and I offer my deepest sympathy for the loved ones of the five individuals who passed away,” the county kingmaker said in a statement. “Sadly, there will be more deaths related to COVID-19.”
Mercer County’s rise in cases this week coincided with the opening of the first public drive-thru testing center at the Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrence.
The testing center, open to adult residents who have a doctor’s order and an appointment, tested more than 260 patients over three days, officials said.
The county tally is but a drop in the bucket.
New Jersey now has 29,895 cases as Gov. Phil Murphy announced another 4,337 cases at Friday’s news briefing, the second-highest total in the nation behind New York.
He ordered flags to fly at half-staff in honor of New Jersey’s growing victim count, now at 646, calling the pandemic “one of the greatest tragedies to hit our state.”
New Jersey remains on lockdown after Murphy ordered schools and non-essential businesses to close and banned social gatherings.
State authorities have charged and issued citations to those flouting the governor’s order requir
Jerseyeans to stay home unless they need food and supplies, to visit doctors or exercise while still practicing social distancing.
State leaders continued to urge residents to keep practicing social distancing with the Easter and Passover holidays approaching, with Murphy saying the fight could last months.
Health commissioner Judy Persichilli said 42 percent of the 64,827 New Jerseyeans tested were positive for coronavirus.
Persichilli said 3,016 patients are hospitalized, accounting for 12 percent of total hospitalizations in the Garden State. More than 1,200 are on ventilators, she said.
Patrick Callahan, superintendent of New Jersey State Police, said a Blairstown pub owner was among those cited overnight for not following the governor’s lockdown directive.
It was the second time she was cited for serving customers at her establishment.
Nearly 80 people have been charged with indictable offenses since the governor’s executive order went into effect.
As thousands New Jerseyeans struggle in the economic downturn, the Murphy administration announced more initiatives to try to keep businesses afloat through the pandemic.
Tim Sullivan, the executive officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, said 73 percent of about 2,000 businesses surveyed reported steeps losses in revenue.
More than half were forced to lay off staff, he said.
“The pain is very real,” he said.
The state would make millions available to smalls businesses in grants. Applicants are eligible for up to $5,000 per company. By Friday afternoon, the state already had 16,500 applications.
Local Breakdown
Bergen County, not far from New York, the nation’s epicenter of the outbreak, had more than 4,800 cases and 132 deaths as of Friday.
While the Trenton area hasn’t been hit as hard as North Jersey, Mercer County saw a 40 percent rise in the number of reported cases since the beginning of the week.
Dr. David Cennimo, an infectious disease specialist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, said Mercer County should prepare for another “surge” in the coming weeks.
Even with 42 testing centers now operating across the state, officials said, there’s no universal testing, with only the most serious cases prioritized.
Many showing mild or moderate symptoms of coronavirus are likely not to be included in the state’s tally, Cennimo said.
Access to regional testing — Mercer County only has one for the public at Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrence — will undoubtedly impact the accuracy of the number of cases reported locally and statewide, he said.
“There are more infected people everywhere than our current numbers document,” Cennimo said. “It may be that the greater Trenton area has not tested as many people.
“We have been seeing a steady southward movement of the virus through New Jersey. Bergen County has been rocked. We now have many many cases in Essex and Union. I fear you are just a week or two behind us. I think that you should be prepared for the possibility of a surge. Everyone should be prepared for it to be as bad as northern NJ.”
Because New Jersey is a home rule state, with no centralized agency overseeing the state public health system, coronavirus reporting has been piecemeal in Mercer County. The numbers are fed to local health officers, who then relay them to state officials.
Many residents wanting to know the case counts in their areas have been flying blind. The Trentonian has tried to keep a running local tally but not all 12 towns have responded with their numbers.
Trenton as of Friday had the most known cases in the county at 83, followed by Hamilton (82), West Windsor (39), Princeton (31), Lawrence
(20), Robbinsville (14) and Ewing (11).
Hopewell Valley was reporting 20 as of Thursday, according to health officer Stephanie Carey, who cautioned that was a “gross undercount.”
Some municipalities, like Princeton and West Windsor, provide detailed daily breakdowns of the cases on their websites, while other townships provide little or no information or simply parrot the county’s daily release of local figures provided by the state Department of Health.
Murphy was asked about the four counties, Mercer being one of them, that are not providing town-by-town breakdowns of coronavirus cases.
He said it was “really a county call” whether to give out that info.
Mercer County Executive Hughes, who has been criticized over the county government’s tepid response to the crisis, announced later in the day his office would launch a new website in the coming days that tracks the cases in each of Mercer’s municipalities.
“We are making every effort to be transparent while also respecting the letter of the law with regard to individuals’ privacy rights,” Hughes said.