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Health secretary stresses precautions as some counties prepare to reopen

4 min read
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Pennsylvania reported 1,334 new cases of COVID-19 – including two in Washington County and one in Greene County – on Saturday.

The statewide figures included 64 new deaths, which raised the total count to 2,418. There have been 48,305 infections from the coronavirus in the state. None of the new deaths were in Washington or Greene, where the numbers of fatal cases remained at two and one, respectively.

Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine urged people throughout the state to continue practicing social distancing, frequent handwashing and other precautions, even as 24 of the state’s 67 counties prepared for the first phase of a gradual reopening in less than a week on May 8.

“We have said all along that ‘yellow’ (the first phase) means ‘caution,’ and so we’re very excited, and I know the counties are very excited that their businesses will be able to have this phased reopening plan. But this remains a very dangerous virus, and this virus remains throughout Pennsylvania, and so we need to be very careful that we maintain many of the social distancing measures that we have talked about.”

Examples of those measures include frequent hand washing and use of hand sanitizer, wearing masks in public and keeping a distance of at least six feet from others. Reopened stores and other establishments should conduct business by roadside pickup when possible.

The counties where many businesses considered non-essential will be allowed are in the less densely populated northwestern and north-central parts of the state. The zone that will be declared “yellow” stretches from Erie and Lawrence counties on the western side to Bradford and Northumberland counties on the eastern edge.

Southwestern Pennsylvania officials, including members of the Washington and Greene county governments, said on Friday they were frustrated that their region was not part of the vanguard for easing restrictions.

Levine said Gov. Tom Wolf had promised to look at southwestern counties, but added that she had no specific dates.

“We’re going to be looking at that now. We’re going to be looking at all of our data,” she said. “We’re looking to see if there are any changes this week in terms of case rates, We’ll be working on, as we’ve discussed, our laboratory testing plans and our contact tracing plans in different counties.”

Several state agencies said on Friday that they were taking steps to prevent evictions and other problems related to housing during the public-health crisis.

“Access to safe, secure housing can greatly impact a person’s health,” said Teresa Miller, Secretary of Human Services. “As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of safe housing is more essential than ever.”

In a prepared statement, Miller added that the additional assistance would help people follow the governor’s stay-home orders, “regardless of their current housing circumstance.”

To that end, DHS said a statewide taskforce was helping to coordinate shelter with county emergency-management agencies.

The Department of Community and Economic Development was planning to issue an unspecified number and amount of grants to assist the newly homeless.

The state Supreme Court has already ordered a halt to evictions. The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Authority said that in addition to halting evictions and foreclosures, it was instituting waivers on late fees for people with PHFA mortgages who are having financial problems because of the pandemic.

PHFA asked managers of buildings receiving low-income housing tax credits to give tenants leeway on April rent payments and to waive late fees for people who’ve lost wages because of the outbreak.

“PHFA continues to work with public and private sector groups to make sure Pennsylvania homeowners and renters have access to the most resources possible from the federal CARES Act to aid their recovery from the economic slowdown,” said Robin Wiessmann, CEO and executive director of PHFA.

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