Officials urge residents to ‘stay the course’ as coronavirus statistics improve

The coronavirus epidemic in Philadelphia is getting “better in several ways,” officials said Thursday; the number of new cases over time is continuing to go down in Pennsylvania, and New Jersey is seeing its lowest hospitalization rates since health officials began publicly reporting those numbers in early April.

“If we want to get to the point where we can safely reopen,” said Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, “we need to just keep doing what we’re doing.”

As 24 counties in northern and western Pennsylvania enter the first reopening phase Friday, Gov. Tom Wolf said he would announce additional counties cleared to move from the state’s red phase to yellow on Friday. He didn’t say where, but infection rate data indicated some counties in the southwest have reached at least one of the state’s benchmarks for reopening.

Pennsylvania on Thursday reported 1,070 additional confirmed coronavirus cases, for a total of 52,915 cases, and 310 additional deaths, jumps attributed to data reconciliation between state and local health departments and a “data dump” from a commercial lab. The deaths occurred over the last several weeks, Health Secretary Rachel Levine said.

“We’re going to see what the numbers are tomorrow and over the weekend and into next week to follow trends,” Levine said. “Overall, the number of new cases over time continues to go down.”

Philadelphia reported a drop in new cases of the virus, cases in the city’s prisons and nursing homes, and hospitalizations. The slowing of new cases is “picking up speed,” Farley said, a good sign, and the number of deaths reported per day is also on a downward trend.

Still, Farley urged residents to wear masks in public. “The fact that we have 350 cases in a day means that there are plenty of people out there with this infection, so we are not ready to reopen yet,” he said.

Several groups advocating for the reopening of city businesses in spite of health officials’ warnings that the region cannot yet safely reopen, along with counterprotesters from the “Refuse Fascism Philly” organization, plan to demonstrate at City Hall on Friday.

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The number of patients hospitalized with the virus was 10% lower Thursday than it was at its peak, Farley said. As of Thursday, 911 patients with the virus were hospitalized in Philadelphia and 1,677 were hospitalized in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Farley said. He reported 350 new confirmed cases in the city.

New Jersey’s peak in April resulted in over 8,200 people hospitalized — a number officials said could have been much worse without social distancing measures. On Thursday, Gov. Phil Murphy reported 4,996 people hospitalized.

“Having fewer than 5,000 people in the hospital for COVID-19 is a milestone,” Murphy said. “It means, among other things, that the stress on capacity is lessening.”

New Jersey reported an additional 1,827 confirmed cases, bringing the state’s total to 133,635, and 254 deaths, increasing the state toll to 8,801.

And the virus continued to exact a financial toll: Nearly one-third of the one million New Jerseyans who have filed for unemployment benefits are still waiting, state officials reported Thursday, and the state plans to get another call center up and running in the next couple of weeks to help process claims.

One-quarter of Pennsylvania’s workforce — more than 1.7 million people — has filed for unemployment benefits in the last seven weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In New Jersey, about 23% of the workforce has filed jobless claims.

Self-employed, independent contractors, and gig workers in Pennsylvania can now file unemployment claims backdated to as early as Jan. 27. Many have encountered glitches in the state’s new system.

Philadelphia collected only half as much revenue in April as it did during the same month in 2019, Mayor Jim Kenney announced Thursday.

The city’s $385 million in revenue collections for the month of April was 47% lower than the amount collected in April 2019, Kenney said.

“This is the first clear indicator of the local impact of COVID-19 on the city’s revenue collections,” Kenney said during a virtual news conference.

Protection against evictions and foreclosures was extended until at least July 10 by an executive order signed by Wolf on Thursday. No one in Pennsylvania can be evicted or have their home foreclosed on due to inability to pay until that date, Wolf and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced.

Meanwhile, health officials continued imploring people to stay home. While there are no formal travel restrictions for Pennsylvania residents, Levine said she would discourage them from flocking to reopening New Jersey beaches as the weather warms up.

“My recommendation is not to do that,” Levine said, citing New Jersey’s high infection rates. “If you go to the Shore, I bet you other people will go to the Shore, and it’ll almost be impossible to practice social distancing.”

And with Mother’s Day on Sunday, New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli urged the state’s long term care facilities to provide socially distanced ways for families to honor their mothers.

“Love your moms from a distance,” Persichilli said. “I understand how difficult it is to adhere to all of our restrictions, particularly those on visitation in health-care facilities. But they must remain in place to protect your loved ones.”

More than 120 New Jersey National Guard members are being deployed to long-term care centers across the state to help with the crisis; 51% of those who have died of the coronavirus in New Jersey have been residents of nursing and long-term-care homes.

In Southeastern Pennsylvania, Bucks County officials who requested that the state assess coronavirus cases in nursing homes separately from cases in the broader community when determining which areas can reopen said they have not received a direct response from the governor.

Wolf told reporters Tuesday in response to the suggestion from Bucks and Delaware Counties commissioners and state lawmakers that he would not change the reopening metrics, but said there will “always be a measure of subjectivity in” the process.

“It didn’t appear to me from his comments that anybody had closed the door” on the idea of a separate assessment of community spread outside long-term-care facilities, said Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo. “We’re looking forward to working with the governor in the future.”

Montgomery County Commissioner Joseph C. Gale on Thursday called for his county to reopen despite an infection rate that remains much higher than the state’s benchmark. He said the governor “has failed” as a leader and also called for the county to reopen with cases in nursing homes removed from the county’s overall infection rate.

“We must begin the process of reopening Montgomery County,” said Gale, a Republican. “This has gone extremely too far, and we have to get back to commonsense basics. Common sense is the key medicine to combating the coronavirus.”

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The county reported 563 confirmed and probable deaths from the virus on Thursday. Commissioners Chair Val Arkoosh, a physician, said after Gale spoke that the county was not ready to reopen.

“There is no amount of common sense that’s going to make [this virus] go away,” said Arkoosh. “There’s only one thing, and that’s science and data.

“But here’s the thing, we have to stay the course. We are just not quite there yet. This is not the time to throw our hands up in disgust and walk away.”

Staff writers Anna Orso, Laura McCrystal, Ellie Rushing, and Rob Tornoe contributed to this article.