Philadelphia region braces for surge in coronavirus cases, preps new hospital and quarantine beds

A sobered and mostly shutdown Philadelphia region labored on Saturday to quickly transform a basketball arena, hotel, and other venues into medical sites ahead of a feared wave of coronavirus sickness and death.

New cases and fatalities were reported around Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, Delaware, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, while the number of infections topped 11,000 in New Jersey and an additional 32 people died as Gov. Phil Murphy pleaded with residents to stay home.

“No one is getting graded on a curve for social distancing,” Murphy said. “This is a pass-fail test. This is life and death.”

Pennsylvania officials said people coming into the state from hammered New York City should quarantine for 14 days.

President Donald Trump, who earlier had suggested on Twitter that he was considering whether to quarantine New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, said Saturday night that instead he was going to issue a “strong travel advisory” for those states.

The numbers were grim: Pennsylvania health officials announced 530 more cases of the coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 2,911 in 56 counties. The death count was at least 35, with 13 new deaths reported Saturday.

New Jersey’s fatalities reached 140, Murphy said at a news conference, including 32 on Saturday. Rutgers New Jersey Medical School announced its 192 final-year students would graduate early to begin residencies and provide critical health care during the outbreak.

Delaware reported three deaths on Saturday, bringing its total to five. Officials said the dead were a 77-year-old man who had been hospitalized, and two men, 74 and 76, who had not, but disclosed no additional details.

Health officials there also announced that a second care facility had been struck by multiple cases, after six residents of a memory-care unit of HarborChase of Wilmington tested positive. Five are now hospitalized.

Across the Philadelphia region, people longed for normality in a world turned upside down — and threatening. Health-care workers emerged as the new superheroes, saluted by Superman and his Justice League colleagues in social-media memes, and on Facebook people encouraged one another to share a positive thought amid the crisis.

» READ MORE: Coronavirus fears trigger hunger strike by immigration detainees at Pa. prison

In Philadelphia, the Four Seasons Hotel at the top of the new Comcast Technology Center arranged its lights to shine as a hopeful Valentine’s heart. In the Center City streets below, the Rittenhouse Market, at 17th and Spruce Streets, set up a dunking station to sanitize shopping carts between uses, offering some reassurance to customers worried about touching any potentially contaminated surface.

“We were talking about how best to clean the hand-baskets, and one of our ideas was to use the service sinks in the back,” general manager Phil Cantor said. “We thought, ‘Why not blow it up to handle the carts?’ ”

A few blocks away at 13th and Walnut Streets, the business signs for the Holiday Inn Express were covered with tarps as workers prepared to open the building as quarantine space.

About 150 rooms will be available for people who tested positive for the virus, or had contact with someone who did, but who do not require hospitalization. Rooms can go to any individuals who cannot quarantine in their own homes for reasons including homelessness or because they have an immunocompromised relative.

The site already has hosted some quarantined city employees.

City Managing Director Brian Abernathy said officials were working to secure as many as six hotels to provide a total of at least 800 rooms.

Work also was underway to create a medical center at the shuttered Glen Mills Schools campus in Delaware County, where members of the National Guard hauled supplies into the facilities on Saturday. Setup was to begin at Temple University’s Liacouras Center for overflow hospital space that could hold up to 250 patients.

Glen Mills and Temple would not house patients with COVID-19, officials said. Instead, they would take in patients from other facilities, freeing hospital beds to treat those with the highly contagious virus.

“Materials and supplies will be moving into the Liacouras Center over the next few days,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. “I sincerely hope we never have to use the supplies or this space, but we will be ready if we do.”

» READ MORE: Grocery deliveries and ‘virtual well-being checks’ help social-service groups keep tabs on the sick and elderly

One more death was reported in Philadelphia, and Montgomery County officials reported the fifth death there, a 61-year-old woman who lived in Norristown.

“On behalf of our entire community, we extend our most heartfelt condolences to the loved ones of this individual,” said Board of Commissioners Chairperson. Valerie A. Arkoosh.

Across the United States, hospitals have been fighting a disaster as the numbers are exploding and frontline doctors and nurses face shortages of everything from face masks to ventilators.

Philadelphia-area hospitals are preparing for a devastating surge, while praying it never comes. The city reported 806 confirmed cases — a 24-hour jump of 169 — as of Saturday morning.

Delaware County officials announced a death on Saturday, bringing that county’s total to five. The patient was a 65-year-old man from Springfield Township, officials said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf added three more counties — Beaver, Centre, and Washington — to the state’s stay-at-home order, for 22 counties total. And more than 100 retired medical professionals have applied to reactivate their licenses to help in the pandemic, Wolf said.

The state also waived restrictions on nurse practitioners, who currently must practice within a specialty, and on out-of-state doctors, as Wolf said the state needs “all the hands we can get.”

Close to 12% of those who tested positive have needed to be hospitalized, said state Health Secretary Rachel Levine. Of those, 97 required treatment in an intensive-care unit and 56 of those needed a ventilator.

Coronavirus cases now have been confirmed in zip codes throughout Philadelphia, according to newly released data. While the map shows some neighborhoods more affected than others, it hints at the omnipresence of the coronavirus and emphasizes the need for social distancing.

“It’s here,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security “It’s all over. This is why we all need to stay home.”

Starting Monday, Philadelphians can pick up boxes of free food at sites around the city, officials announced. Each household can have one box, which is expected to last up to five days. No identification or proof of income is required.

The hours are 10 a.m. to noon on Monday and Thursday, and pickup places are listed on the city’s website. The program is separate from the locations that offer food for students during school closures.

Meanwhile, at least 180 immigration detainees held at the York County Prison started a hunger strike to demand their release.

“We are chickens in a chicken coop here – we are like sitting ducks,” said one striker, Jesus, identified by only his first name by Movement of Immigration Leaders in Pennsylvania, an activist group.

Health officials have warned that detention centers, jails, and prisons could be hotbeds of COVID-19 outbreaks. The migrants held at York include asylum-seekers, who are pursuing a legal means of staying in the country.

The strikers fear that the virus will be brought inside by staff, and that once detainees become ill they will not get proper medical attention, according to MILPA and immigration attorney Alyssa Kane of ALDEA – The People’s Justice Center in Reading.

In New Jersey, Gov. Murphy announced that financial institutions will provide mortgage forbearance and financial protections for residents facing money trouble because of the virus. The goal is to “ensure that no one loses their home during this public health crisis,” he said.

Police in Ewing Township cited a man for throwing a packed party in his Mercer County apartment, in defiance of government stay-at-home restrictions. Disorderly persons citations were issued to Wade E. Jackson, 54, for obstruction and violating an executive order after police found 47 people, including a DJ, inside the 550-square-foot apartment.

Murphy said he had not spoken with Trump about a possible quarantine of the Garden State. The two spoke on Friday though “nothing on quarantine came up,” Murphy said.

There’s “no question the greater New York metro area is the No. 1 hot spot in America right now,” Murphy said. “Until further notified, we’re going to keep doing exactly what we’re doing.”

Staff writers Vinny Vella and Susan Snyder contributed to this article, as did Sarah Anne Hughes of Spotlight PA