STATE: Pennsylvania COVID-19 Statistics
per Pennsylvania Department of Health
Data updated as of 12:00pm on 5/5/2020

¹ Total case counts include confirmed and probable cases.

STATE: Cases by Age Range to Date
per Pennsylvania Department of Health
Data updated as of 12:00pm on 5/5/2020

STATE: Hospitalization Rates by Age Range to Date
per Pennsylvania Department of Health
Data updated as of 12:00pm on 5/5/2020

REGIONAL: COVID-19 cases by county to Date
per Pennsylvania Department of Health
Data updated as of 12:00pm on 5/5/2020

REGIONAL: COVID-19 Cases Associated with
Nursing Homes and Personal Care Homes to Date
per Pennsylvania Department of Health
Data updated as of 12:00pm on 5/5/2020

State Coronavirus Updates

• Nearly 1 Million Pennsylvanians Have Applied for a Mail-In Ballot for June 2 Primary Election: Nearly one million voters have applied for a mail-in ballot for the June 2 primary election, Governor Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar announced today in an update on how the state is preparing for the election. Read more: https://www.governor.pa.gov/newsroom/nearly-1-million-pennsylvanians-have-applied-for-a-mail-in-ballot-for-june-2-primary-election/.
• Wolf Provides Business Guidance as Counties Move to Yellow Phase on May 8: To continue to limit the spread of COVID-19, Governor Tom Wolf provided guidance that details procedures businesses must follow to conduct in-person operations in counties slated to move to the yellow phase of reopening on May 8. All businesses, including non-profits, permitted to conduct in-person operations are subject to this guidance. This guidance is based on the building safety and business safety orders, under which nearly all life-sustaining businesses have been operating during the red phase. Read more: https://dingo.telicon.com/PA/library/2020/2020050597.HTM.
• AG Shapiro: Travel, Event Refund Policies Must Be Honored During COVID-19 Emergency:  Attorney General Josh Shapiro urged businesses to honor their promised refund policies for customers who had their trips and events cancelled due to COVID-19 closures. Read more: https://dingo.telicon.com/PA/library/2020/2020050575.HTM.
• Positive COVID-19 trends continue for PA, though next few days could shed more light on whether recent lower new cases, deaths will be sustained: Low numbers for new COVID-19 cases and deaths continued into Monday, though potential lags in reporting could, as they have been the last several weeks, be revealed on Tuesday. Acknowledging some of the potential positive signs from the recent virus-related numbers, state Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine on Monday during her briefing cautioned: “One of the things we have noticed is that on Sunday and Monday we tend to have lower counts – decreased reporting on the weekend – and then, usually, Tuesday is a higher number. So we will see tomorrow if the trend of decreasing continues, or if it rises. Again, changes over time are the most important thing to watch for.” See attached article.

Regional Coronavirus Updates

• Allegheny County Health Department
  • Of the 1,375 cases in Allegheny County, 1,317 are confirmed cases and 58 are probable cases. Additionally, there are 244 past or present hospitalizations (+4). To date, there have also been 109 deaths (+7). Of those, 99 are confirmed (had positive test) and 10 are probable. All deaths are of individuals ranging in age from 42-103, with 85 being the median age of those who have died.
• Pittsburgh International Airport
  • Pittsburgh International Airport is deploying autonomous robots to clean floors in an ultra-efficient manner. The airport has teamed up with Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Roboticsto deploy the self-driving robots to use ultraviolet lights that augment traditional cleaning tools, a first for U.S. airports. The robots are in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where airport sand other public spaces are searching for ways to enhance their cleaning methods. Researchers say UV-C rays, which have been used to sanitize hospital rooms for decades, can be applied to other high-traffic settings like airports.
• Port Authority of Allegheny County
  • The Port Authority announced it would be resuming its regular hours of operation for its customer service center following a reduction of hours at the facility’s downtown facility in March. According to a statement from the organizations, the Port Authority said it has successfully transitioned its customer service staff to remote working and it is now able to increase the times customers can request assistance. Representatives from the transit organization’s customer service line will now be available for support from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the weekdays and from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
• Beaver County
  • A Beaver County legislator introduced legislation Monday May 4 that calls for the immediate inspection of all nursing homes in the state because of the COVID-19 pandemic. State Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Ambridge, also wrote a letter to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro that asks him to investigate the situation at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, the nursing home in Beaver County where at least 61 people have died from a COVID-19 outbreak. Twenty-nine of Matzie’s colleagues in the House have signed on as co-sponsors. Matzie hopes the bill can quickly move forward to a vote. The bill would require the department of health to determine and assess each facilities’ infection control procedures, provide testing for every resident and worker, record all findings and report them to the public.
• Westmoreland County
  • Spirit Airlines is starting once more to fill seats with passengers headed from Westmoreland County to Orlando, Fla., as it resumes service this week at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport.  Spirit suspended service at the Unity airport for nearly a month, amid travel trends depressed by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, the sole commercial carrier has returned to Arnold Palmer with a schedule limited to three flights per week connecting Orlando and Unity.  Each flight initially stops at Pittsburgh International Airport to let off passengers from Orlando, and to pick up others headed south, before landing at the Unity airport.

National Coronavirus Updates

• According to CNN, as of 12:45 pm on Tuesday, May 5, 2020, there are 69,079 coronavirus-related deaths and 1,181,885 total positive cases in the United States.
• While the worst-hit parts of the United States have seen new infections recede and hospitalizations drop after strict social-distancing measures were put in place, the country is still in the firm grip of a pandemic. More than a month has passed since there was a day with fewer than 1,000 deaths from the virus. Almost every day, at least 25,000 new coronavirus cases are identified, meaning that the total in the United States — which has the highest number of known cases in the world with more than a million — is expanding by 2 to 4 percent daily. Rural towns that one month ago were unscathed are suddenly hot spots for the virus…an ominous harbinger of what a full reopening of the economy could bring. “If you include New York, it looks like a plateau moving down,’’ said Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine. “If you exclude New York, it’s a plateau slowly moving up.”
• Increasingly, lawmakers, media coverage and ordinary voters are focused not on preventing a potential depression, but on litigating which recipients of federal rescue are morally worthy and which are not. For many on the political left, that has expressed itself as outrage at big corporations taking advantage of government rescues or cheap credit supplied by the Federal Reserve. On the right, it has included anger at federal government support for state and local governments, and at expanded unemployment insurance benefits supporting the jobless. For the news media, it has meant articles about rescue money going to arguably unworthy organizations like prep schools and steakhouse chains. In effect, a scramble is underway to define who counts as deserving of a piece of the multi-trillion dollar federal rescues. The risk is that this fuels a sense of scarcity, of zero-sum jockeying. It has the potential to limit the government’s response and suspend help to affected individuals, businesses and governments before the crisis is anywhere close to ending.