PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio/AP) — Pennsylvania reported another 554 deaths from the coronavirus to pass 3,000 total, while Gov. Tom Wolf said Tuesday that he is not committing to a particular schedule to lift stay-at-home pandemic restrictions in the state's counties or regions.
The large number of new deaths reported Tuesday by the state Department of Health were spread out over the previous two weeks, the agency said, as it reconciles its figures with deaths being reported by local agencies or hospitals.
Still, it was as stark a figure as the state has reported since the first case of the new coronavirus was detected in Pennsylvania in early March. It comes as the growth in cases appears to slow down in many parts of Pennsylvania and Wolf's administration moves to lighten its restrictions on movement and business activity.
With the economic fallout of the pandemic shutdown growing, Wolf maintained Tuesday that he would stick to a reopening process that relies on what he sees as indicators tied to safety.
Wolf also acknowledged that the state, as it begins allowing many businesses to reopen in 24 counties this Friday, will be unable to investigate or enforce every complaint about an employer not following his administration's safety guidance to protect workers and customers.
On a conference call with reporters, Wolf acknowledged fielding complaints from lawmakers from various regions about lifting restrictions there sooner, or removing hard-hit nursing homes from regional case counts that factor into whether he will lift restrictions.
However, Wolf otherwise said it is not realistic to ignore case counts in prisons and nursing homes, and he said that setting a schedule to reopen counties would be arbitrary.
"What we're trying to do is keep people safe — and we're going to be guided by that as we were guided in opening 24 counties last week," Wolf said. "The next round, when it comes, is going to come when we feel it's OK to open another series of counties."
Wolf promised an announcement on Allegheny County and southwestern Pennsylvania "soon." The county, with 1.2 million people, and its immediate area remain under the governor's strictest orders, the so-called "red" designation.
In other coronavirus-related developments in Pennsylvania:
Social distancing at beaches
With beaches in New Jersey and Maryland opening to the public, Wolf was asked what advice he had for Pennsylvanians who are itching for the smell of the ocean.
He said the state can lay down as many rules as it wants, but Pennsylvania residents are going to make up their own minds about going to the shore.
"Whether we're going to do vacation, visit family members, whatever, we've got to keep in mind this is not any formal governmental injunction," he said, "this is a virus that is telling us what to do, and if we ignore the virus, we do so at our peril."
Wolf said if people travel out of state, they should still practice social distancing and all other coronavirus-related guidelines, as they transcend state boundaries.
Mail-in ballot boom
A million or more Pennsylvanians may end up employing the state's new vote-by-mail system in the presidential primary that is four weeks away.
The Department of State said nearly a million people have applied for a mail-in ballot, which is permitted for the first time under a law passed last year.
Along with the presidential race, this year's contests include row offices, Congress and the Legislature.
Until this year, Pennsylvanians who did not want to vote in person needed to have an approved excuse in order to obtain an absentee ballot. But the 2019 voting reform law authorized no-excuse mail-in ballots for the first time.
As of Monday, 949,000 applications had been made for mail-in or absentee ballots, according to the Department of State. During the 2016 primary, 84,000 votes were cast in Pennsylvania using the absentee ballot process.
The deadline for registered voters to ask for an absentee or mail-in ballot is May 26. They must be returned by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 2, the primary day.
Case count
About 865 additional people tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the state Health Department. That lifted the statewide total to nearly 51,000.
The number of infections is thought to be far higher than the state's confirmed case count 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 fully recovered.
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said the number of COVID-19 cases are leveling off in the state, but she said it's still way too early to put the virus in the rear view mirror.
Although new cases are below 1,000 for the day, she said that is not an accurate count.
"We know we get less case reports over the weekend, but today is Tuesday, and we still had less than 1,000, so that is promising," she said. "We are gonna need to see if that trend continues because the numbers and data over time is the most important metric."
Levine said Pennsylvania has to reconcile state figures with numbers from other data systems, like Philadelphia, which operates on a different system. She said health officials are working on faster and smoother reconciliation in the future.
Real estate transactions
Starting Friday, real estate activity can resume in areas designated as yellow under the governor's reopening plan, albeit with limitations. That includes no more than two people in a property at one time for in-person inspections, showings or walk-throughs, and social distancing precautions must be taken as well, including masks.
Hank Lerner, director of law and policy for the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors, said social distancing guidelines mean that open houses are pretty much off the table. But, he said, the Wolf administration should have allowed three people to go into houses together to accommodate both spouses and their agent. Otherwise, two such tours might be necessary, thus potentially increasing exposure to the virus, Lerner said.
In areas still designated as red, the only allowed transactions are where a buyer's property was already under contract prior to Wolf's March 19 order to close non-life-sustaining businesses. Someone who sells their house under one of those contracts is allowed to buy another house to live in, although the problem with that, Lerner said, is that the person they are buying from may not have a place to live since they, in turn, cannot buy a house in a county designated as red.
The association, in the meantime, is backing legislation that would allow agents to resume operations as long as they adhere to social distancing practices and other federal guidelines.
Optimism in Montgomery County
Montgomery County officials offer up some optimism about the trend of the coronavirus in the county, but they couple it with caution.
Montgomery County commissioner Val Arkoosh said there's a long way to go until restrictions can be lifted, but she said the county is trending in the right direction in many of the key markers that go into that decision.
"I'm very encouraged to see our case numbers are clearly trending downward. I do want to remind everybody this is not a license to be free. We can easily turn this around," she said.
She cautioned one person can have a major effect spreading the virus.
"We have to be personally responsible and do everything we can do to protect other people from us. Because any one of us could be that asymptomatic person who's actually positive and is walking around spreading this virus," she said.
___
KYW Newsradio's Kim Glovas and Jim Melwert, as well as the Associated Press, contributed to this report.
