PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — "Today, we bring truly difficult news," Mayor Jim Kenney said one year ago. March 25, 2020, brought the first COVID-19 fatality to Philadelphia.
"This was a male, in his 50s, with an underlying condition," Health Commissioner Dr. Tom Farley said in that day's COVID-19 media briefing.
That man was the first of what is, to date, more than 3,200 people lost to the virus in Philadelphia.
Early in the pandemic, the overwhelming majority of deaths were in nursing homes. The city has worked to bring that down to 36% of deaths. It remains clear, though, that the virus is most deadly to older people.
That fact led to another concern that was growing in March. Pennsylvania’s primary was a month away, and most poll workers were in the most vulnerable group of senior citizens.
Besides that, the schools and business that usually served as polling places were closed to limit the spread of the virus, and training on administering the new voting machines had to be cancelled.
City Commissioner Lisa Deeley joined election officials across the state in calling for a delay to the primary.
"An in person election on April 28 would be exceedingly difficult," Deeley said at the time.
They got their wish. On March 25, the state legislature passed a bill rescheduling the primary to June 2, and it went off remarkably smoothly.
By a lucky coincidence, it was the first election in which the state allowed mail-in ballots for everyone. It would be the cause of controversy in November, when Donald Trump lost the presidential election and claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting resulted in widespread voter fraud. But the practice kept the June primary from becoming a spread event for the coronavirus.
COVID: Then and Now is a KYW Newsradio original monthlong series looking back at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in Philadelphia. Reporters revisit the news from exactly one year ago and examine how protocols, restrictions and science have evolved since then. Check back weekdays in March for more.