Coronavirus impact grows statewide

Few cases, but officials eye next steps in virus fight

• Ed Mahon
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  Ed Mahon comes to Spotlight PA from PA Post, where he covered state politics and policy, produced radio stories that were broadcast on public media stations throughout the state and on NPR’s national newscasts, and co-wrote a weekday newsletter. Prior to joining PA Post, Ed worked for six years as an investigative and political reporter for the York Daily Record, part of the USA Today Network. His reporting on failures in Pennsylvania’s system for protecting domestic abuse victims was a finalist in the national 2018 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the local reporting category. He was also part of a team whose coverage of the criminal justice system, including the aggressive use of civil asset forfeiture by York County prosecutors, received the 2018 G. Richard Dew Award for Journalistic Service from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Before joining the York Daily Record, Ed covered K-12 education at the Centre Daily Times in State College and worked as a stringer for suburban sections of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

 Gov. Tom Wolf / Flickr

Pennsylvania Commonwealth microbiologist Kerry Pollard performs a manual extraction of the coronavirus inside the extraction lab at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories on Friday, March 6, 2020.

Gov. Tom Wolf / Flickr

Pennsylvania Commonwealth microbiologist Kerry Pollard performs a manual extraction of the coronavirus inside the extraction lab at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories on Friday, March 6, 2020. (Via Gov. Tom Wolf administration / Flickr)

• Twelve: That is the number of presumed positive coronavirus cases identified in Pennsylvania as of Tuesday afternoon. The counties where patients live are: Delaware (1); Monroe (1); Montgomery (8); Philadelphia (1); Wayne (1).

• Lack of transparency: WHYY looks at why New Jersey residents are getting more information about the coronavirus outbreak than their neighbors across the Delaware in Pa.: “In New Jersey, the public knows the age of the presumptive coronavirus patients, the municipality in which they live, and the hospitals where they’ve been admitted. The information available to Pennsylvanians about the cases within the state is more limited and varies in detail. As a general rule, the state has revealed only the counties where cases crop up and how patients acquired the virus, leaving it up to county health officials to disclose hometowns, should they need to.”

• Other K-12 school action: The Harrisburg School District postponed its 500 Men Reading and Career Exploration Day. The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools says it wants to help schools plan for the possibility of having to temporarily implement a “full scale cyber education model.”

• March sanity: The University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team clinched a spot in the Ivy League basketball tournament with three straight wins, Noah Levick reports for NBC Sports Philadelphia. But the risk from the coronavirus prompted the Ivy League to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.  The regular-season champions in the Ivy League — the Yale men and Princeton women teams — will automatically qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

• Back to school? Bucknell University, Muhlenberg College and West Chester University announced Tuesday that they are going to online-only instruction for the rest of the semester. Gettysburg College is extending spring break by a week. Administrators at other higher ed institutions — including Penn State, Penn, Pitt and CMU — are considering their options

• Philly go bragh: On Monday, WHYY’s Miles Bryan reported that Philadelphia planned to continue with its Irish celebration on Sunday, March 15. By Tuesday evening, however, Bryan tweeted that the decision to go forward with the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade was reversed. More from The Inquirer.

• Protecting nursing homes: An organization representing senior health providers says nursing homes and assisted living facilities should allow visitors only for “critical or time-sensitive reasons such as hospice-related visits, complete medical authorizations, etc.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has the details. The American Health Care Association, the industry’s national standards and lobbying group, says nursing homes across the country should bar or severely restrict visits until the coronavirus threat has passed. The recommendation has the support of the federal government, The New York Times reports. The York Dispatch has a story on stepped up health screenings by HCR ManorCare facilities.

• Protecting vets: The Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System plans to screen everyone who enters its facility for COVID-19, Sean D. Hamill reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

• Barring jail visits: In Westmoreland County, the jail is taking increased precautions, Renatta Signorini reports for TribLIVE. The warden wrote that any visitors who shows “signs of being sick (coughing, sneezing) will be denied visits and asked to leave the building.” Northampton County is banning all visitors and volunteers from its jail, according to The Morning Call.

• 2020 Update: Joe Biden appeared Tuesday night in Philadelphia to thank voters in Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho for supporting his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination (North Dakota and Washington state are still too close to call). Biden had originally planned to speak in Ohio, but chose to head back to his Philly HQ and speak to a smaller gathering out of concerns about the growing coronavirus outbreak. Biden “Biden will address his plans for how to respond to the crisis in a speech Thursday in Delaware,” The Inquirer reports.

• Safe voting: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided guidance for cleaning voting machines and other election equipment. In Washington state, which is leading the country in coronavirus cases, the head of elections is offering this piece of advice: Don’t seal your ballot returns by licking the envelope. Use a wet sponge or cloth instead. That is useful advice to keep in mind in Pennsylvania which created new mail-in voting options that will be in place for the April 28 primary.

• Isolation vs. quarantine: You might hear these words a lot. The Pennsylvania Department of Health put out this guidance for how it uses them: Isolation is when a sick person with a contagious disease is separated from people who aren’t sick. A quarantine is what happens to people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick. Someone in quarantine might not become sick.

Coronavirus must-reads:

• Axios: How to beat back the coronavirus

• WITF: Symptoms, spread, testing and terminology: Answering your coronavirus questions

• Inquirer: Coronavirus testing is expanding but likely not fast enough to contain undetected spread

• The Atlantic: Cancel Everything — Social distancing is the only way to stop the coronavirus. We must start immediately

• StatNews: U.S. communities are braced for coronavirus outbreaks. Seattle is already in the thick of it

• Pa. Department of Health — Coronavirus page

Best of the rest

Ed Mahon / PA Post

Briann Moye, environmental justice organizer with One Pennsylvania, speaks against House Bill 1100 during a rally in the state Capitol on March 9, 2020. (Ed Mahon / PA Post)

• A proposed tax credit for the natural gas industry is dividing Democrats in Pennsylvania. The issue pits environmentalists against labor unions, two groups that often align with Democrats. State Sen. Katie Muth (D-Montgomery) spoke against the tax credit during a Monday morning rally. She acknowledged the tension between lawmakers and labor groups. But she said it doesn’t need to be a contentious issue. “The conversation that needs to happen now is how we move forward together with a plan that does not sacrifice our health and wellbeing of both the public and the environment,” Muth said.

• But that tension remains. During a rally in favor of the bill later on Monday, state Rep. Gerald Mullery (D-Luzerne) brought up two decisions by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration: Planned closures of a state prison and of a facility for people with intellectual disabilities. Those planned closures represents hundreds of jobs leaving the county. “We’ve taken too many hits,” Mullery said. He urged Wolf to support the tax credits — and vowed to fight for a veto override if Wolf doesn’t.

• Backers of the bill hope to lure investment in north-central and northeastern Pennsylvania which produce “dry” natural gas. The Pennsylvania Capital-Star‘s Stephen Caruso recently spoke with the CEO of an energy company that is considering building a plant in Pennsylvania.

• Meanwhile, the White House is considering federal assistance for oil and natural gas producers who face plummeting oil prices, The Washington Post reports.

• Pittsburgh City Paper’s Ryan Deto recently looked at the number of fracking jobs lost in Pittsburgh, the problems created by an oversupply of natural gas and why some people are hoping petrochemical plants — like the ones state lawmakers want to lure to north-central and northeastern Pennsylvania– are a potential solution.