Your daily coronavirus update: Pennsylvania reports 200 more virus deaths; toll over 3,600

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The Pennsylvania Department said Friday that 200 more people with COVID-19 have died, raising the statewide death toll to 3,616.

The deaths took place over the past several weeks. The Health Department has been reconciling its records with data provided by hospitals, health care systems, municipal health departments and long-term care centers.

Residents of nursing homes and personal care homes account for more than two-thirds of the overall death toll, although the state Department of Health has not disclosed the number of deaths or cases by nursing home.

More than 1,300 additional people have tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. To date, the virus has been confirmed in over 54,000 people in Pennsylvania.

In central Pennsylvania counties, a total of 9,751 people have tested positive or are presumed to have had the virus since the first cases were reported in the region on March 13. Of those who tested positive, 483 died from COVID-19.

Today’s update includes four newly reported deaths in Dauphin County, four in Lancaster and three in Schuylkill. The death toll in Columbia County decreased by one.

• Adams: 154 cases, including 5 deaths
• Berks: 3190 cases, including 168 deaths
• Columbia: 307 cases, including 20 deaths
• Cumberland: 414 cases, including 31 deaths
• Dauphin: 764 cases, including 37 deaths
• Franklin: 452 cases, including 11 deaths
• Juniata: 93 cases, including 1 death
• Lancaster: 2122 cases, including 165 deaths
• Lebanon: 797 cases, including 16 deaths
• Mifflin: 50 cases
• Northumberland: 118 cases
• Perry: 34 cases, including 1 death
• Schuylkill: 430 cases, including 13 deaths
• Snyder: 33 cases, including 1 death
• Union: 40 cases, including 1 death
• York: 753 cases, including 13 deaths

The number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick. There is no data on how many people have recovered.

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.

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In other coronavirus-related developments in Pennsylvania:

Bars and restaurants

Bars and restaurants in counties that have been minimally impacted by the coronavirus are asking to be allowed to seat customers again — but outside.

Even as Wolf eases pandemic restrictions in dozens of counties, dine-in service is still off-limits at eateries statewide.

 

A trade association for restaurants and bars that have liquor licenses wants Wolf to loosen restrictions on establishments in the so-called “yellow” zone, counties where Wolf has lifted stay-at-home orders and allowed retailers to reopen. Those bars and restaurants should be able to open decks, patios and courtyards, at up to 50% of the outdoor maximum seating capacity and with tables at least 6 feet apart, the Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association said.

Parking lots also could be used to offer limited seating, roped off with a single entry point, while the bars and restaurants could offer live entertainment, with restrictions on noise levels, the group said.

As the virus continues to ebb, the association said it wants establishments to be able to seat patrons inside, with the same social-distancing rules as outside.

Shutdown restrictions to ease in 13 more counties

Thirteen western Pennsylvania counties, including much of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, can begin re-opening next week, joining much of northern Pennsylvania that began emerging Friday.

The counties are Allegheny, Armstrong, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Fulton, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland, comprising nearly 2.7 million residents.

The only western county held back, Beaver County, is home to perhaps the state’s worst nursing home outbreak, where dozens have died and a congressman is calling for an investigation.

The easing of restrictions in western Pa. means that 37 counties will no longer be under the Wolf administration’s “red” phase in response to the coronavirus pandemic — the tightest level of shutdown restrictions.

Dauphin is among the central Pennsylvania counties that remain under “red” restrictions. Jeff Haste, chair of the Dauphin County commissioners, wrote a letter Friday to “the people of Pennsylvania” criticizing the Wolf administration’s shutdown orders, saying it’s time to stop running the state “like a dictatorship” and re-open the commonwealth.

Haste wrote that Pennsylvania’s positive COVID-19 cases amount to .4 percent of its population, and that businesses and residents have learned how to deal with the virus.

“Since Gov. Wolf closed the state to minimize the 54,238 positive cases, more than 1,793,200 Pennsylvanians have lost their jobs,” Haste wrote. “This decision has ruined the livelihood of millions of hard-working Pennsylvanians in exchange for 0.4% of our population.

“This need not happen — enough is enough.”

Outbreak at Dauphin County Prison

Eight inmates and five county or contracted workers at the Dauphin County Prison have tested positive for COVID-19. All are asymptomatic at this point.

A spokeswoman says a facility-wide testing program was conducted earlier this week.

Inmates with the coronnavirus were immediately placed in an isolation unit and anyone who had contact with them was placed in quarantine units for close monitoring.

Staff members who tested positive were immediately sent home to quarantine for 14 days.

Nursing homes

Nurses on Friday said nursing home workers in Pennsylvania said facilities where they and their colleagues work never had enough personal protective equipment for staff.

Artinese Malachi, a nurse in Pittsburgh who is represented by the Service Employees International Union, said she and her colleagues are “forced to work with the bare basics of protection on an already taxed staff.”

“We were never prepared; most long-term care facilities weren’t and still aren’t,” Malachi said during a telephone news conference organized by the state Democratic Party.

Nursing home industry officials in Pennsylvania have acknowledged that they have had trouble getting personal protective equipment and testing capability.

Tina Siegel, a nurse in Clarion County, said she and her colleagues have a good relationship with her facility’s management, but its owners have not secured enough protective equipment. Instead, they use cloth masks, she said.

She and her colleagues have N95 masks, but many don’t fit properly and they were asked to wear them five times before throwing them out, Siegel said.

“It doesn’t matter how soiled they are in between, we have to wear them five times,” Siegel said.

Siegel and her colleagues are caring for patients stricken with coronavirus, but, she said, those patients’ rooms are not separate from other patients’ rooms, as recommended by federal guidelines. In addition, she and her colleagues take care of both patients infected with the virus and those who are not, instead of being dedicated to one or the other, as federal guidance recommends, she said.

The women did not identify where they work.

Dental care

Some elective dental procedures can resume statewide, the state health secretary announced Friday, though cleanings and other routine dental care are still off-limits.

Gov. Tom Wolf and Health Secretary Rachel Levine revised their business closure orders to lift the prohibition on “non-urgent and non-emergent” dental procedures.

Dentists and staff must have personal protective equipment and use infection control practices that adhere to federal guidance, Levine said. And all patients must be screened for symptoms of the virus before arriving.

“This isn’t a return to routine dentistry,” Levine said.

Antibody testing

A suburban Philadelphia county said it spent a month fighting red tape at the state Department of Health before winning permission to offer coronavirus antibody testing to first responders, health care workers and their families.

Chester County said Friday it’s the first county in Pennsylvania to offer the blood tests, which can detect whether someone was infected with the virus in the past. Researchers are trying to determine whether people who have already fought the virus have some level of immunity.

Marian Moskowitz, chair of the Chester County Board of Commissioners, said the Health Department set up regulatory road blocks that delayed the rollout by a month.

“So instead of channeling our efforts into getting the tests up and running, we have had to focus our energy on overcoming the red tape,” Moskowitz, a Democrat, said in a written statement.

Levine, asked about the delay at a video news conference Friday, said the county went through a “process” to be able to offer the tests.

The testing began Friday at two locations.