Allegheny County reports 6 new coronavirus cases, bringing total to 18

The Allegheny County Health Department on Thursday reported six new cases of covid-19, increasing the number of cases in the county from 12 to 18.

Some of those patients have acquired the virus through community spread, health department Director Dr. Debra Bogen said during a press call.

“Similar to what we’ve seen in other states and other countries, we know that the number of those testing positive will continue to rise as testing increases and becomes more available,” Bogen said. “Now that we do have increasing spread of the virus in our community, our goal here is to slow that spread as much as possible, particularly to high-risk groups through careful mitigation efforts.”

Community spread refers to cases in which someone is infected with the virus, but it cannot be determined where or how the patient was infected.

Officials do not believe that there are clusters of covid-19 in any particular parts of the county, but are urging residents to heed requests that they stay home and practice social distancing.

Additional details about the latest local cases were not yet available, but contact tracing is underway on the six new cases.

Contact tracing involves asking infected individuals about the nature of their job, particularly if it involves working in health care, child care or at a facility like the county jail, and whether they went to work since showing symptoms of covid-19, said Dr. LuAnn Brink, chief epidemiologist at the Allegheny County Health Department.

The health department has about 15 to 20 staff members working on contact tracing efforts, Brink said.

Anyone who is identified during the contact tracing process to have been exposed to an infected patient will be notified by the health department by phone and email.

Westmoreland County reported its first two cases of covid-19 Thursday.

Those cases were among 52 new confirmed cases statewide, bringing the total number of Pennsylvania cases to 185. That is a 39% increase over the previous day.

That jump comes as Pennsylvania also reported its first death related to covid-19 Wednesday, an adult patient in Northampton County.

Beaver County is reporting two cases and Washington County is reporting three cases.

Erie County reported its first case of covid-19 Wednesday afternoon. The patient is a 35-year-old in isolation at home.

Those numbers are updated daily but do not always reflect cases reported by individual counties.

“Our notable increase in cases over the last few days and our first death in Pennsylvania indicate we need everyone to take covid-19 seriously,” Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said.

There were 1,608 patients who tested negative for covid-19 in Pennsylvania as of Thursday.

Allegheny County will continue to test only specific, high-risk people, as well as health care workers, first responders and those with known exposure to cases of covid-19.

“This selective testing is necessary due to the local and national availability of specimen collection and testing kits,” Bogen said. “Again, this is not just a local issue, it’s across the state, the U.S. and other countries. It’s a global issue.”

Testing capacity has increased as testing capabilities offered by UPMC, at the Mercy outpatient center on Pittsburgh’s South Side, and drive-up sites coordinated throughout the county by Allegheny Health Network, came online this week, Bogen said.