PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia officials still won't speculate when the city can reopen, but they are taking a first step toward that day — even as they reported the highest number of newly confirmed fatalities from the virus yet.
Health Commissioner Dr. Tom Farley said when his staff reconciled data from multiple sources, they found 78 additional deaths, bringing the total number to 986.
Most of the cases are about a week old, so even though the virus is proving to be deadlier than previously thought, the trends continue downward: New cases overall, new cases in congregate settings, where there had been clusters, and hospital cases are all down.
There are now 18,779 cases of COVID-19 in the city since the start of the pandemic.
"Overall, I can say we're clearly making progress in the epidemic," Farley added.
He said there are still too many cases to reopen and could not confirm a date, but he did make one thing clear: The city will not be reopened by Memorial Day. Officials say they'll have specific advice on how to celebrate while social distancing before the holiday.
The city is putting systems in place now to prepare for a reopening, including posting jobs for "contact tracers" — people who will keep track of those who've been exposed to the virus to prevent a resurgence when restrictions are lifted.
"It's not so much a technical job as it is an important job that requires interpersonal skills," he noted.
They will be grant-funded, so it's not clear how many contact tracers the city will be able to hire, and to what extent it needs volunteers. Farley said the city will also need software to manage the large amount of data.
"All of those are systems we're putting in place now," he said. "As we make progress I'll be reporting back in the future," he said.
Farley emphasized that a successful reopening does not necessarily mean no virus.
"Unfortunately, the virus is going to be around until we have a vaccine that we can give broadly to people. What success looks like in the future is that the virus will be at such a low level we can resume most of our activities and most people are not going to get infected, so suppression of the virus is what we're shooting for here. But we do think we can come up with a system where the virus is at low levels and we can restart most of our activities in a safe way."
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For more city resources regarding COVID-19, visit phila.gov/covid-19 or call the Greater Philadelphia Coronavirus Helpline at 1-800-722-7112.
