Your daily coronavirus update: Wolf mandates masks as GOP seeks to relax business shutdown

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(Harrisburg) — Going to a Pennsylvania supermarket, home improvement center, pharmacy or other business that remains open during the pandemic? Be prepared to wear a mask. That goes for workers, too.

Many commercial buildings that serve the public will be required to make sure customers wear masks — and deny entry to anyone who refuses without a medically valid reason — under an order signed Wednesday by the state health secretary.

Employees will have to wear face coverings, too, including those who work in warehouses, manufacturing facilities and other places that remain in business but aren’t open to the public.

The mask mandate was included in a wide-ranging order that will govern many aspects of how a business operates — from how it arranges its break room to how many patrons it can allow inside at any one time — as the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf confronts a pandemic that has killed at least 647 in Pennsylvania and sickened thousands more.

Wolf said the latest order is meant to protect supermarket cashiers, power plant operators and other critical workers who can’t stay home and are at heightened risk of contracting the new coronavirus.

“Our essential workers have stepped up to the plate and are keeping us safe, healthy, fed and sheltered during this time, and we all need to thank them (by) doing everything we can to prevent ourselves from spreading the virus to them,” he said at a video news conference.

Wolf is ratcheting up pressure on retailers, warehouses and other establishments to enforce social distancing guidelines and minimize the virus’s spread just as majority Republicans in the state Legislature seek to ease his administration’s shutdown of businesses it doesn’t consider “life sustaining.”

Wolf previously closed schools and nonessential businesses and ordered people to stay home.

In other coronavirus-related developments in Pennsylvania:

Cases

More than 1,100 additional people tested positive for the coronavirus, for a new statewide total of nearly 26,500, according to the Department of Health.

The number of new virus infections has declined in recent days, and state Health Secretary Dr. Levine has said “the curve has been flattened significantly” after weeks of social distancing.

Gov. Tom Wolf closed schools and nonessential businesses and ordered people to stay home.

Since the first cases were reported in central Pennsylvania on March 13, a total of 4,048 people in the region have tested positive for the virus.

The first coronavirus-related deaths in this region were reported about two weeks later, on March 28. In the 16 days since, a total 81 central Pennsylvania residents have died from COVID-19 or related complications.

Today’s update includes three new deaths in Lancaster, one in Berks, one in Schuylkill and one in York.

• Adams: 64 cases, including 1 death
• Berks: 1335 cases, including 28 deaths
• Columbia: 131 cases, including 3 deaths
• Cumberland: 131 cases, including 4 deaths
• Dauphin: 271 cases, including 5 deaths
• Franklin: 78 cases
• Juniata: 47 cases
• Lancaster: 914 cases, including 29 deaths
• Lebanon: 349 cases, including 2 deaths
• Mifflin: 15 cases
• Northumberland: 56 cases
• Perry: 17 cases, including 1 death
• Schuylkill: 212 cases, including 3 deaths
• Snyder: 24 cases, including 1 death
• Union: 23 cases
• York: 381 cases, including 4 deaths

For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up in a couple of weeks. Older adults and people with existing health problems are at higher risk of more severe illness, including pneumonia, or death.

Inmate release

Pennsylvania health officials on Wednesday reported 63 new deaths of people with COVID-19, raising the statewide toll to 647, as the prison system prepared to release inmates in an effort to contain the new virus.

Seven inmates were in the first group slated for release Wednesday, Corrections Secretary John Wetzel told reporters in a conference call. Gov. Tom Wolf had previously authorized the early release of as many as 1,800 inmates under his reprieve authority.

“I’m a little slammed right now,” said Wetzel, who is personally reviewing each inmate proposed for release.

The Department of Corrections plans to post the names of released inmates and the counties they are going back to. Inmates will be confined to their homes or sent to halfway houses.

Pennsylvania’s state prisons hold about 44,000 inmates. The department said 23 employees and 17 inmates have so far tested positive for the new coronavirus, with one death from COVID-19.

The dead inmate was identified as a client of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, a legal group that works to exonerate people who say they were wrongly convicted.

Rudolph Sutton, 67, an inmate at Phoenix state prison in Montgomery County, died April 8. He was serving a life sentence for murder. He was among 14 inmates at Phoenix who contracted the virus, according to the Wolf administration.

“Mr. Sutton should never have been incarcerated in the first place,” Nilam Sanghvi, legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, said in a written statement. “As an innocent man who served 30 years for a crime he did not commit, his tragic death underscores the urgent need for the governor, the Department of Corrections, the Legislature, and the courts to act quickly so that another factually innocent person does not risk death in prison due to COVID-19.”

Eligible inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses and are within months of their scheduled release. The Corrections Department said it is seeking input from judges and prosecutors, and not all eligible inmates will be released. Wetzel said it’s unclear how long the process will take.

The Corrections Department believes those who are being let out before their minimum sentence has been completed will eventually have to return to serve the rest of it.

Currently about 300 state prison employees are off the job, pending medical tests or waiting out a two-week isolation period.

The prison system has been feeding inmates in cells and controlling all movement to achieve social distancing since late March.

Reopening businesses

The GOP-controlled Legislature sent Wolf a bill on Wednesday that would force him to allow some businesses to reopen, but its fate was unclear.

The Senate approved the legislation on a party-line vote, sending it to Wolf’s desk for his signature.

Wolf hasn’t explicitly said that he would veto it, although his health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, wrote to senators Wednesday to warn of the bill’s “devastating” impact on the administration’s ability to fight the virus.

Republicans accused Wolf of overseeing a haphazard and secretive process for determining which businesses must close, and which may remain open. Democrats, in turn, accused Republicans of ignoring health experts and risking lives. Republicans countered they were merely trying to force Wolf to adopt guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Shell plant shutdown

Several hundred workers are heading back to Shell’s massive manufacturing complex in western Pennsylvania.

Shell, under pressure from state and local officials, announced in mid-March that it was suspending construction at the soon-to-be-completed ethane cracker plant in Monaca that will turn the area’s vast natural gas deposits into plastics.

Fewer than 300 workers had remained on site to do maintenance work. Shell said Wednesday it will have about 500 people at the site by next week after receiving word from the state that the “repair, preservation and maintenance” work it has been doing didn’t require a waiver.

The company said it will adhere to state and federal social distancing guidelines.

State tax relief

The Wolf administration said it’s easing up on tax enforcement during the pandemic.

The Department of Revenue said it will pause payments on existing payment plans on request; offer flexible terms for new payment plans; suspend or reduce automatic enforcement of liens, wage garnishments and use of private collection agencies; and take other steps to offer relief to individual and business taxpayers.

The measures will last through at least July 15, the agency said Wednesday.

The Department of Revenue previously extended the deadline for taxpayers to file their 2019 Pennsylvania personal income tax returns from April 15 to July 15.

Community response fund

The Foundation for Enhancing Communities and United Way of the Capital Region partnered to help long-standing nonprofit organizations that are responding to the coronavirus crisis, including food banks, shelters and other vital service providers.

Donors can contribute to the COVID-19 Community Response Fund online.

The fund has already collected $118,000 in combined donations from The Hershey Company, Highmark Health, TFEC and generous private donors. To ensure nonprofits providing essential services to the community get the money they need quickly, funds will be released on a rolling basis as fundraising continues throughout the outbreak and recovery phases of the pandemic.

Geisinger creates employee emergency fund

Geisinger’s CEO and other executives have volunteered to take a 20-30 percent temporary pay cut and donate the funds to a newly created employee emergency assistance fund. The pay reductions will provide the fund with about $250,000 per month.

More details about the application process for this employee assistance will be announced soon.