Allegheny County officials: 'We're not there yet' on reopening

Allegheny County’s covid-19 case numbers are no longer declining, but they’re stable, Dr. Debra Bogen, health director, said Wednesday.

The county’s test positivity rate increased slightly from last week, from 5.5% to 5.9%. Hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline. But Bogen said she is concerned about the results of recent case investigations.

“We have again started to hear that sports teams are having social gatherings, people are hosting parties and some reports indicate a lack of mask-wearing and lack of physical distancing,” Bogen said. “We are so close to being able to safely hold such events again, but not yet.”

Though covid-19 case levels, deaths and hospitalizations have improved markedly in both the region and nationwide, county officials urged residents not to let their guard down.

“We’ve been down this road before,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said. “Back in June, when we went into the Green Phase, people relaxed a little too much and we saw our cases explode and in July we had to make some actions that we didn’t want to do, but needed to be done.”

The pattern persisted, Fitzgerald said, through each of the region’s surges in the virus.

Fitzgerald alluded to recent news out of Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott lifted the mask mandate and allowed businesses to reopen at 100% capacity.

“We’re not there yet,” he said. “Hopefully in a couple of months when more and more people get vaccinated, we will be there. But what’s been great about this region is the level of cooperation, people following our medical experts and taking their advice.”

Fitzgerald agreed with Gov. Tom Wolf’s actions this week, though, including the loosened restrictions for event spaces that will allow sporting events to offer more spectators in stadiums, and the initiative putting teachers at the front of the line for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Bogen said the county’s supply of vaccine continues to improve, as well as the amount of advanced learning the health department receives about when and how much vaccine they’ll get each week. The department began administering first dose shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at its Castle Shannon distribution location this week, as well as second dose shots of the Moderna vaccine at its Monroeville location.

By the end of next week, Bogen said the department will also have vaccinated around 150 residents of senior living facilities. At a Board of Health meeting earlier in the day, Bogen told board members the county had administered vaccines in 14 facilities managed by the Housing Authority of Allegheny County. The department is not the only organization visiting the more than 170 senior facilities in the county.

Bogen told board members the health department has received about 46,000 doses of vaccine so far, which makes up about 10% of the county’s total allocation from the state. The department has administered more than 42,000 of them – the rest will be administered by the end of the week, she said.