Gov. Wolf: No decision yet on which areas of Pennsylvania could move to 'yellow' phase on May 8

A day before state officials were set to announce what parts of Pennsylvania could see coronavirus restrictions eased, Gov. Tom Wolf said his administration hadn’t yet decided which areas will be included.

“We haven’t even made the list up yet,” Wolf told reporters when asked what Pennsylvanians can expect from his Friday announcement.

Wolf and other state officials have set Friday as the day they will reveal which regions could move into what they’ve dubbed the yellow phase on May 8. Many coronavirus-related restrictions will remain — telework is highly encouraged, restaurants will remain take-out only — but the stay-at-home order will be lifted for yellow phase counties.

Even with loosened restrictions, Wolf said, people still should take precautions: wear masks, social distance and limit your chances of exposing yourself or others.

“You owe it to yourself to stay safe,” he said. “You owe it to your family to stay safe.”

He said it’s up to each individual to “be responsible so you don’t bring something back to your house and infect your loved ones and neighbors.”

“It’s individual Pennsylvanians deciding whether or not they want to do the right things,” he said.

Once the immediate threat of the pandemic has passed, he said, life still will not be what it was.

“We’re going to have to behave differently, or we’re going to get sick,” he said. “We’re going to have to learn how to deal in this infectious-disease world in ways we haven’t in the past six or seven decades.”

State officials have backed away from identifying specific regions that could move to the yellow phase. In announcing the phased reopening plan last week, Wolf said northwest and north-central Pennsylvania could be the first to move to yellow.

“We don’t have any hard-and-fast region in mind,” Wolf said Thursday.

He also acknowledged that more than one county in Southwestern Pennsylvania has asked not to be grouped with Allegheny County. Armstrong County commissioners have expressed the desire for their county to be among the the first to reopen.

“I’m not sure what the inclination is to want to separate out different parts of the Southwest,” he said.

The administration has settled on a metric of, on average, 50 new, confirmed cases per day per 100,000 residents for counties over the course of 14 days. Hitting that number would mean the state would consider moving the counties in that region to the yellow phase, but officials acknowledge the move is subjective.

“The metric is necessary, but it’s not sufficient,” Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said. “We’re looking at other different qualitative factors to determine what counties will go from red to yellow.”

Beyond that, things such as testing capacity and hospital capacity will be taken into consideration, officials said. If cases spike, an area could move back into the red phase.

Levine has said there is no specific percentage of the population that should be tested for a region to be considered safe to open. The state’s priority will remain with testing symptomatic individuals.

The red phase, which currently covers the entire state, means that all of the stay-at-home and other public health restrictions put into place since March remain in effect.

“As regions hit benchmarks that show that they’re ready, they’ll move to the yellow phase,” Wolf said earlier this month. “This yellow phase will lift some restrictions.”

Many things will still be limited: Schools will remain closed, restaurants will be limited to takeout, and businesses, if able, should prioritize telework.

The state had seen more than 44,000 covid-19 cases and more than 2,000 deaths, according to the most recent data available.