Pa. health secretary: 'Would not surprise us' if coronavirus cases start increasing

Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said no hospitals are strained under the weight of the coronavirus right now, but she expects numbers to continue rising as the month goes on.

“It would not surprise us if we do start to see increasing numbers – probably next week and the week after,” Levine said during a virtual news conference Tuesday. “We are working to prepare for that if it occurs.”

Levine said the state Department of Health will be updating the number of cases across Pennsylvania only once per day. As of midnight Tuesday, the total was 96. The state’s numbers do not necessarily include all cases confirmed by individual counties.

Across the state, 879 patients have tested negative, she said.

Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, said there are early talks of two public testing sites in Philadelphia and Montgomery counties.

“Currently, we’re talking kind of a high-level concept of operation and working to operationalize that right now, so we’re taking a look at site selection and those types of things,” he said.

The sites would be federally funded and focus on patients who “fall within a certain symptom range,” he said.