Times during the pandemic have shown to be stressful on both citizens and business owners, especially with no universal guidelines for states and counties to follow in reopening economies. St. Marys Mayor Louis Radkowski, along with Sam MacDonald, Ridgway Borough president, Alfred Malleto, Johnsonburg Borough president and Elk County Commissioners Matthew Quesenberry, Fritz Lecker and Joseph Daghir wrote a letter to Gov. Tom Wolf last Thursday to obtain a more definitive timeline for Pennsylvania counties to transition from the yellow to green phase.
In the letter, the group emphasized the importance of providing Pennsylvanian counties with a clear timeline on what it means to move from the yellow to green phase, noting that Wolf’s current plan indicates counties must have fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 people before going to green. When analyzing Elk County’s statistics, the county has only had a total of five cases throughout the entire pandemic, with two new cases in the past 14 days.
“Adjusted per 100,000 population, this puts Elk County at 6 new cases per 100,000
population, or less than 1/8 the maximum number of cases allowed before transitioning from red to yellow,” the letter reads.
Due to a lack of response, the previous group of Elk County leaders, in addition to Dave Mattiuz, Fox Township supervisor, Michael Beaver, Ridgway Township supervisor and Jefferson County Commissioners Herbert Bullers Jr. and Jeffrey Pisarcik sent another letter to Wolf this week. This letter is also regarding the need for specific measures on what criteria Pennsylvania counties need to meet to transition to the green phase, noting the area has already met many of the mentioned criteria thus far, such as the aforementioned infection statistics as well as available ICU beds for COVID-19 patients in the case of an uptick of cases.
Elk County officials also noted some of the guidelines proposed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Risk-Based Decision Support Tool, which Wolf noted as crucial to the decision-making process, may actually prevent the area from opening up, despite the very low infection rate. For example, one high risk factor was “population age risk,” meaning the percentage of people in the county older than 60.
“This is yet another metric that is impossible to trend downward in anything except the longest term,” reads the letter. “Pennsylvania has the ninth highest median age of all states, meaning that there are 47 other states and U.S. territories that are younger than Pennsylvanians.”
Radkowski said the letter wasn’t written to be disrespectful to the governor or his office; it was meant to serve as a voice for rural Pennsylvanians so their needs can be heard.
“You can look around the state and see everyone giving in to the emotional response — the easy response — saying we’re just going to open up,” explained Radkowski. “We wanted to put some thought behind our message.”
He went on to mention the issues with the current yellow phase, as many individuals and businesses are still asking questions about the grey areas of the transition from red to yellow.
“I’m glad maybe we’ll get some clarity, but at the same time, it would be nice that rural PA had a voice at the table that these are our needs — it has to be a solution that works for all counties,” Radkowski noted.
He stated the ideal outcome would be communication for a clear timeline on what it means to move into the green phase.
“I’m not expecting a change into normalcy,” Radkowski said. “What I’m looking for is the directions we need to take to transition. What does it take to open businesses back up?”
