Pennsylvania is going to give a helping hand to the areas of the state that don’t have a county health department.

By state law, only six counties have those offices: Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Erie, Montgomery and Philadelphia.

Allegheny updates residents and the media regularly about what is happening with the coronavirus pandemic. The director, Dr. Debra Bogen, has news conferences where she discusses not just the number of positive test results and deaths, but reasons for those statistics and actions the county is taking.

Other counties, such as Westmoreland, have their data updated by the state, with less easily accessible give and take about what the numbers actually mean.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf announced the state would make some additional help available to those counties in the form of testing.

“Our goal is to ensure that everyone who needs a test in Pennsylvania can get one,” he said.

The state contracts with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare. That contract will be expanded to provide five teams over the next 12 weeks, offering regional testing at drive-thru and walk-up sites in the 61 counties without their own department.

The first are happening in Bedford, Mifflin, Northampton and Tioga. Butler will begin testing Friday through Tuesday. About 450 patients can be tested daily in these pop-up locations.

This is a great start for the governor. On his own, he can’t change state law and permit or fund health departments in those other counties. Finding a way to help is a step forward.

But the small amount of help just points to what else is needed.

The system seems like the kind of advice offered to people with lots of debt spread over lots of credit cards. Financial gurus will advise eliminating the number of cards by focusing on the ones with the smallest balances, then moving on to the next.

Bedford, Mifflin and Tioga counties are among the least populated in the state, each with less than 50,000 residents. Butler and Northampton, on the other hand, are larger and have higher covid numbers.

The smaller counties with low infection rates definitely can benefit by these traveling testing sites. But counties with higher, more concentrated populations and troubling coronavirus growth need more.

And this is not something the governor can do, or something that people should want him to do. It isn’t his job.

State lawmakers should take a hard, close look at the health needs of more of the counties and then re-examine the law that made just six county health departments.

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