On Monday afternoon, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine held her daily coronavirus briefing.
Question: Do all PA counties have to be in Yellow before any county can move into the Green phase?
We haven’t made any of those determinations to the present time.
Question: Why did the Lycoming County case numbers increase by one today; while the nursing home case count increased by 3, is this a statistical reconciliation issue?
Not exactly sure in terms of that granularity of data. Of course if someone is a resident of another state than they or another County that count towards that County, but I’m actually not specifically sure.
Question: With 65% of COVID-19 deaths in PA occurring in nursing or personal care homes, going forward what measures are you taking to ensure the well being of those patients and health care workers?
So I have said before that actually the well being and the safety and the health of individuals and long-term care living facilities such as Nursing Home and Personal Care Homes are are really our top priority. And so we have a collaboration between as well as has PEMA and as well as working with the facilities themselves in terms of working towards that we have infection control experts and public health best first at the Department of Health that have been working with those facilities.
We have been working with 100% of the facilities that have had cases of covid-19 in addition we have contracted with ECRI our consultants do further infection control work with those facilities?
In addition, as we’ve been discussing we have had the National Guard go into to provide staffing for those facilities.
We have pushed out well over fifteen hundred different specific pushes to all the nursing homes for personal protective equipment such as n95 masks and the other type of resources that they need to take care of patients.
And we will be continuing to do that Over the last number of weeks actually since hospitals have been doing somewhat better absolute priority has been pushing out the PPE towards that will be working on the and as I’ve said before the release of the specific data and cases.
So we will continue to do absolutely everything we can to protect the staff and the residents of long-term care living facilities.
Earlier in the day, State Senator Doug Mastriano called upon Secretary of Health Levine to resign over the handling of the nursing home outbreak and high death numbers in those facilities.
On Sunday, News Talk 104.1 published a story chronicling the issues Secretary Levine and the Department of Health has faced during the pandemic.
Last week, News Talk 104.1 first reported EXCLUSIVE: Monroe County Coroner tells Gov. Wolf, Sec. Levine should resign.
Henry Lowman of the Lincoln Institute penned an Op-Ed Sunday calling upon Secretary Levine to resign or be fired by Governor Wolf.
Lowman also hosts Lincoln Radio Journal, News Talk 104.1 is an affiliate station.
Stay tuned to News Talk 104.1 & 1600 WEJS and talkwilliamsport.com for developments on this story.
The reporting of News Talk 104.1 on this topic is available here:
May 10
EXCLUSIVE: Are the COVID-19 death numbers in PA accurate? Will Sec. Levine be forced to resign?
May 6
EXCLUSIVE: Monroe County Coroner tells Gov. Wolf, Sec. Levine should resign
May 1
EXCLUSIVE: Coroner Conundrum
April 24
EXCLUSIVE: Coroners Kiessling & Lynn Provide COVID-19 Update on News Talk 104.1
April 23
EXCLUSIVE: Coroner Kiessling Provides Local COVID-19 Update on News Talk 104.1
April 23
EXCLUSIVE: Coroner Kiessling requests information from Dept. of Health
April 22
EXCLUSIVE: Sec. Levine responds to News Talk 104.1 on Coroner concerns and COVID-19 funding
April 22
BREAKING NEWS: Coroner Kiessling issues Wednesday Statement
April 21
EXCLUSIVE: Lycoming County Coroner Kiessling joins News Talk 104.1 on COVID-19 death reporting
April 21
EXCLUSIVE: Lycoming County Coroner Kiessling challenges Sec. Levine on COVID-19 death reporting
