Pennsylvania has reached a “concerning milestone” in covid-19 infections and hospitalizations, Health Secretary Rachel Levine said Monday.

Levine said the state’s percent positivity rate — measuring the number of covid-19 tests that come back with positive results — is over 12%. Health experts have said any rate above 5% is cause for concern.

As of Monday, only Forest County was below 5%, and five counties had rates higher than 20%, Levine said, but no additional shutdowns or mitigations are planned for now.

“We’re going to be watching this data very closely,” Levine said. “We have no plans for further mitigation. We had instituted mitigation in the last two weeks, and we’ll be observing the impact of that, but it will be hard for me to predict the future in terms of what will be necessary later.”

Before Thanksgiving, the state expanded its existing mask mandate and implemented new travel protocols, requiring 14 days of quarantine or a negative covid test for anyone entering the state.

Monday’s update from the Department of Health shows more than 4,400 people are hospitalized with covid-19 across the state, surpassing the highest numbers from the spring. More than 4,000 new infections were reported Monday, bringing Pennsylvania’s total to 361,464 since March. There were 32 deaths reported, as well, and more than 500 in the past week alone.

Levine instead repeated pleas for the public to abide by existing mitigation orders. She announced that the state’s contact tracing app, Covid Alert PA, will be expanded to serve users ages 13 and older. Before Monday, only users over 18 could use the app.

“By expanding the age range, middle- and high school students will be able to add their phones to the fight and help with the contact tracing that occurs in their schools if a positive case is identified,” said Levine, noting that Pennsylvania has recorded nearly 28,000 cases of covid-19 among children since March, about 8,000 of which have been in the past two weeks.

When it comes to mitigation strategies within schools, Levine and acting state Education Secretary Noe Ortega said moves to online learning remains a local decision for each individual school district. Ortega said the department is offering a wide range of resources to allow schools to maintain more normal procedures, but still recommends remote learning for districts in areas with substantial community transmission.

The Department of Education last week introduced a new policy requiring districts in counties with substantial community transmission to switch to full remote instruction or fill out a form to affirm that they are complying with the state’s covid-19 safety measures.

“Schools don’t operate in a vacuum,” Ortega said. “Many of the things we see happening in our schools are, in many cases, the result of what’s happening in the community as well.”

There are no plans at the moment to make covid-19 vaccination required for schoolchildren — or anyone else — when it becomes available, Levine said.

Officials said the state is continuing to monitor cases in schools and elsewhere with hospitalizations being a point of concern. Levine said hospitals across the state are strained, and said the Department of Health have asked them to collaborate regionally with one another for staffing, bed availability and other resource needs.

“We really want them to self-regulate their own hospitals and regionally in terms of ‘elective procedures’ so that they have the staff and the beds available to take care of patients,” she said.

Levine’s update comes during an alarming surge of infections and hospitalizations in the region. Last week, Allegheny County alone recorded more new infections in 72 hours than it had in April, May and June combined. Hospitals in Western Pennsylvania also set records in hospitalized covid patients, with health professionals warning that some facilities are running out of intensive care beds.

Allegheny County’s health director, Dr. Debra Bogen, said she, too, is worried.

“I expect to see a rise in new cases of covid-19 from Thanksgiving and remain concerned that if our cases continue to rise at this rate, it will strain the capacity and staff of our region’s hospitals,” Bogen said.

She asked people who ignored advisories and attended large gatherings to monitor themselves for covid-19 symptoms.

“Seek testing if you start to feel ill, and avoid all others while you recover,” Bogen said.

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