Now isn’t the time to reopen Pennsylvania, state health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said on Monday.
During her daily briefing, Levine was asked about a Republican plan in the legislature to reopen businesses that legislators feel could operate safely.
“It’s been almost a month since we ordered non-life-sustaining businesses to close,” she said. “This has been a very hard sacrifice.”
However, she added, the rate of patients testing positive for COVID-19 is showing that mitigation efforts are working.
“Our case count numbers continue to grow, but we aren’t seeing the doubling of cases,” Levine said of the exponential growth seen early on. And while people are dying from the illness, the numbers “could have been much worse.”
She said, “The closure is saving lives. If we stop these efforts now, our health systems will become overwhelmed and we will lose many more people to this virus.
“To do any sort of mass opening now would be a very big mistake,” she said.
Monday’s statewide total number of positives was 24,199, with three cases in McKean County, four in Potter County, two in Elk County and one in Cameron County.
“Approximately 1,179 of the total positive cases are in our health care workers,” Levine said, “And 1,688 of the total cases are in our long-term care living facilities, like nursing homes and personal care homes. Tragically, there have been 524 deaths among those who have tested positive.”
According to the Department of Corrections, one inmate at State Correctional Institution at Phoenix died from COVID-19, Levine said.
She explained that 2,205 patients with COVID-19 are hospitalized in Pennsylvania, which is about 10 percent of the total case count. Of those, 665 have required the use of a ventilator. To date, 44 percent of hospital beds, 38 percent of beds in intensive care units and nearly 70 percent of ventilators in the state are still available for use.
Staying at home is the best defense against catching the dangerous, highly contagious virus, as well as social distancing, frequent handwashing and wearing a mask in public.
“These everyday prevention measures can help slow the spread of the virus and give hope to our families and our communities that we will recover together,” she said.
While some are theorizing that Pennsylvania is over the anticipated surge, Levine said she doesn’t believe that is the case.
“We are seeing a plateau in the number of new cases,” she said. “We have bent the curve — we are not following the exponential rise. It’s going up much more slowly. That’s great news. The best way to continue that progress is to stay home.”
Levine was asked, too, if medical marijuana users are more susceptible to the virus.
“It isn’t medical marijuana that would predispose you,” Levine said, “but it would be in how it is delivered. Smoking and vaping could cause some underlying chronic inflammation in the lungs.”
And that could lead to someone who smokes or vapes — including tobacco — to be more prone to serious complications from the virus.
