Pittsburgh officials not included on White House call warning city to step up virus fight

Pennsylvania state officials participated in a private phone call Wednesday in which Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force response coordinator, warned Pittsburgh and 10 other cities needed to get more “aggressive” with covid-19.

After a story about the call was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative newsroom, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County officials said they had no knowledge of the call.

They weren’t alone among local officials from at least some of the 11 cities where Birx said the rates of covid-19 tests coming back positive were rising. The other cities are Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans and St. Louis.

The Cleveland mayor’s office said it did not participate in the call, and Baltimore health officials said they didn’t know about it, according to the Center for Public Integrity article. Contacted Thursday, CPI reporter Liz Essley Whyte said a Las Vegas spokesperson later told the nonprofit the mayor’s office knew about the call but was not on the line. St. Louis media outlets also reported city officials there were in the dark about the call.

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine said in a news conference Thursday a member of Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration was on the call.

“We always have someone from the administration on those national calls,” Levine said.

Levine said she wasn’t surprised Pittsburgh was identified as a city in need of more mitigation strategies.

“We know that Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have had increases,” she said.

The White House did not respond to a message asking why local leaders from Pittsburgh were not included on the call.

Levine said the mitigation strategies Birx suggested aligned with restrictions local leaders already have implemented. Birx’s suggestions — including contact tracing and a strict monitoring of test positivity rates — are “exactly the type of mitigation steps that Dr. Bogen put into place several weeks ago in terms of restaurants and bars and indoor gatherings,” Levine said, referring to Allegheny County Health Director Debra Bogen.

Bogen closed on-site service at bars and restaurants in Allegheny County for a week in early July following a spike in coronavirus cases, before later reinstating outdoor dining. Last week, after Wolf had implemented statewide restrictions on all bars and restaurants, Allegheny County rescinded its orders and largely adopted the statewide mandates, which allow for indoor dining at 25% capacity.

The CPI report of Birx’s phone call did not specify what type of local leaders participated in the conversation, but said hundreds of emergency managers were included.

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County officials couldn’t offer detailed comment on Birx’s recommendations, citing their absence from the call.

When asked if county health officials agreed with Birx’s assessment after the fact, though, spokeswoman Amie Downs pointed to the recent decline in daily case counts and test positivity rates since the initial spike.

“Neither Dr. Bogen or anyone from the (county executive’s) administration was on any such call or has received any such communication,” she said. “Obviously our numbers as compared to other areas in the country indicate that’s not the case.”

Tim McNulty, spokesman for the Mayor’s Office, confirmed city officials weren’t on the call, but acknowledged the region has been challenged by the virus in recent weeks.

“The city is well aware of the challenges facing Southwestern Pennsylvania from covid-19 — there was an entire New York Times story on the surge in cases here just a week ago,” he said, referring to the July 12 article “Pittsburgh Seemed Like a Virus Success Story. Now Cases Are Surging.”

In a Wednesday news conference, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said the county’s spike was the result of complacency after the region seemed to dodge the worst of the virus in April and May.

“We were one of the only places in the country with the density that we have to see numbers that low,” Fitzgerald said. “And I think we got a little bit complacent because we missed being with our friends. We missed being with our families. We missed having normal operations.”

He praised residents for “rising to the challenge,” and following the advice of health officials to bring daily case counts back down. The county reported 147 new cases Thursday, and two deaths.