Harrisburg, PA – The Pennsylvania Department of Health today confirmed 16 additional positive cases of COVID-19— one in Allegheny County; one in Bucks County; two in Cumberland County; one in Delaware County; one in Lehigh County; one in Luzerne County; three in Monroe County; four in Montgomery County; and two in Philadelphia County. All are either in isolation at home or being treated at the hospital. This brings the statewide total to 63 cases.
There have been 446 patients to date who have been tested or are in the process of being tested. There are 205 who have tested negative; 63 confirmed cases; and 183 patient samples are either at the lab for testing or on their way to the lab.
Full Pennsylvania Department of Health Release 3-15-20
Currently, UPMC Susquehanna is offering coronavirus testing.
News Talk 104.1 reached out to UPMC Susquehanna for additional information on the COVID-19 outbreak.
Can you provide the protocol for testing and how UPMC handles these cases?
- Beginning Tuesday, March 17, UPMC providers in Pittsburgh will begin directing patients who received physician care for symptoms consistent with COVID-19 to a specimen collection site at our building located at 2000 Mary Street, Pittsburgh.
- UPMC will later open additional specimen collection facilities in Harrisburg, Erie, Williamsport and Altoona at an as-yet undetermined date after gaining experience with the Pittsburgh facility and after UPMC’s testing capacity increases.
- The South Side collection site in Pittsburgh is not open to the general public. Patients must have a physician referral, which must be approved by the UPMC infection prevention team, and must have an appointment to have their specimen collected. Those specimens will be tested by either UPMC or public health authorities. Collection is by appointment only and ONLY for patients with an approved referral from their physician. Right now, not everyone who wants to be tested can be tested. If you show up without an appointment to our South Side location in Pittsburgh, we cannot obtain your sample and you may hamper the ability of people who want the test under a doctor’s order.
- These specimens will be collected by trained health care providers who will wear the recommended personal protective equipment – that means gowns, gloves and appropriate masks or respirators.
- Patients will enter an isolated waiting room in the collection center to ensure no contact with other patients. This waiting room and the collection rooms are negative pressure rooms, which assure that air in the room does not exit until it flows through a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, which removes infectious pathogens.
- The collection process involves a swab – a thin wire with a cotton-like tip – that is inserted deep into a patient’s nose.
- Once the specimen is collected, it will be safely and securely transported for testing to our clinical laboratory in Oakland, Pennsylvania. In most cases, test results will be returned within 24 hours and patients will be given guidance by their clinician.
- Depending on demand and capacity, we may continue to send specimens to the Pennsylvania Department of Health laboratory in eastern Pennsylvania or health department laboratories in New York and Maryland, as well as to commercial labs as they increase their capacity.
In the case of a positive test result how does UPMC handle those and who actually confirms the results?
- We are designing our test to pick up cases rapidly. We will report our “presumptive” positives, meaning that all of these will be sent to the State or CDC for confirmation and possibly sequencing.
- UPMC is not identifying any patients being tested for COVID-19 or their location, in order to protect their privacy. All proper infection prevention protocols are being followed with any such patients, as we do with all patients with infectious diseases. UPMC facilities and hospitals are safe, and we have preparedness plans in place to handle COVID-19 cases.
- Testing patients does not change how we care for them. But, it allows us to move faster to prevent exposure to others. There is no specific treatment for COVID-19 at present though there are clinical trials elsewhere. We will care for these patients as needed with respiratory and other supportive measures.
On March 8, 2020 the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced 6 initial COVID-19 cases, as of this writing the state total stands at 63 cases.
