DOYLESTOWN TWP., Pa. (KYW Newsradio) -- The daily average of new cases of COVID-19 in Bucks County nearly tripled last week, including the county's highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic. Officials are bracing for the possibility of more hospitalizations and calling on everyone to act responsibly.
On Friday, Bucks County recorded 161 new cases -- "surpassing the previous high of 144 cases on April the 15th," County Commissioner Gene DiGiralamo said.
Truckloads of PPE including masks and gloves heading out from a Doylestown warehouse to nursing homes and hospitals.
Commissioner Diane Marseglia says there's a big difference between the current spike and the spike the county saw in the spring.
“Where last time, long-term care facilities were our problem, this time they’re doing very well. It’s the general public who’s having trouble," she said.
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Commissioner Bob Harvie offered, by way of example: “A big football game, and afterwards players and kids from the winning team decided to get together and celebrate, and that led to a spread among them,” .
Since the spreader events are at private gatherings and not schools or businesses, county officials say there are no plans to implement new restrictions, but they are calling on people to wear masks and to act responsibly.
Marseglia says, above all, people should not ease up on wearing masks.
“People worry a lot about 'Are we gonna shut down again?' 'Are we gonna close businesses?' There is no reason -- no reason -- we will have to do that if everyone is wearing a mask,” she said.
The surge is impeding contact tracing efforts in the county. With cases climbing so quickly, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the county health department is unable to contact everyone who tests positive.
Increases in hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag several weeks behind reports of new cases, but Dr. David Damsker, director of the Bucks County Department of Health, says hospitals are better at intervening earlier than they did in the spring, and treating at-risk patients with certain steroids that can limit the severity of the disease.
He says the county is working with its six hospitals to make sure they are prepared.
Pointing at loaded-up trucks behind him, county emergency services director Scott Forster said, “This PPE, and that planning that’s taking place at the hospitals, is going to pay a lot of dividends in the next weeks ahead of us."