As the coronavirus halts some Census Bureau operations, Gov. Wolf asks for 2020 Census extension

The U.S. Census Bureau is suspending its 2020 Census field operations and some training for at least two weeks as the number of cases of the novel coronavirus continues to climb across the country and residents are told to avoid close contact with each other.

In limited areas where the bureau did not have reliable addresses, census workers had been visiting some households, updating address lists and dropping off paper census questionnaires. That stopped this week. The bureau also will stop training field supervisors until at least April 1, coincidentally the reference point for the 2020 Census designated as “Census Day.”

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During the next two weeks, the Census Bureau plans to continue to reassess and retool its operations to comply with social distancing and health and safety guidelines, said Fernando Armstrong, director of the Census Bureau’s Philadelphia Regional Office.

Census worker training, which was already mostly online, will be even more so, according to Armstrong. Workers will appear in person only to pick up the smartphone they’ll use to record households’ responses to questionnaires, take an oath to protect the confidentiality of data, and demonstrate they understood what they learned during virtual training.

“We are taking many, many steps to make sure that we are not putting our staff at risk, that we are not putting the American public at risk," Armstrong said. "And that we can still work toward a good, accurate 2020 Census.”

Because of social distancing requirements caused by the pandemic, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Wednesday asked the Census Bureau to extend the period in which census takers follow up with households that haven’t filled out their questionnaires. Census workers are scheduled to visit households starting in May, and the deadline to collect responses is the end of July.

“Census awareness and get-out-the-count events will be canceled," Wolf said in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau. "Many people will likely spend more time in their homes and less time out in the community, making it more difficult for grassroots and community organizations to provide them with Census 2020 information. Further, individuals who are hospitalized or quarantined, acting as caretakers for loved ones, or displaced or lacking access to basic needs will likely be focused on their immediate health and safety needs rather than filling out the 2020 Census form.”

The decennial population count is mandated by the Constitution. It determines the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds to state and local governments, the number of seats each state has in the House, and the boundaries of voting districts.

» READ MORE: The 2020 Census will determine the fate of billions in federal dollars. Which programs are at stake?

More than 11 million of the country’s estimated 140 million households have responded to the census in the week since they began receiving invitations to do so in the mail, according to the Census Bureau.

“It just gives us a sense of confidence we will continue to see a significant number of people responding online, and we will send fewer people to knock on doors,” Armstrong, of the Census Bureau, said.

The bureau has until Dec. 31 to get apportionment counts to the president and Congress. The bureau then has three more months to get population data to states so they can redraw their legislative districts.

Armstrong continued to encourage people to fill out their census questionnaires online, by phone, or by mail, so census workers don’t have to knock on their doors. But he also emphasized that those visits would require no physical contact between census takers and residents.