Many new Allegheny County coronavirus cases linked to long-term care facilities - TribLIVE

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Nearly half of recent cases of the coronavirus reported in Allegheny County are linked to long-term care facilities, Allegheny County Health Department officials said Wednesday.

Between April 20 and May 5, county health department staff started investigations on 352 new cases of covid-19.

Of that total, 123 people, or 35% of the new cases, are residents in long-term care facilities, and 36 people, or 10%, are employees at long-term care facilities. Officials did not disclose the names of the facilities.

Since the first case was reported in the county March 14, Allegheny County has reported 1,394 cases of the coronavirus and 111 deaths.

Additional data released by the county health department during the briefing shed more light on who has been getting sick with the coronavirus in recent weeks.

Seven new cases of the coronavirus have been reported among police, fire and EMS workers since April 20.

Health care workers, which includes those who work in long-term care facilities, account for 49 of the new cases, or about 14%.

The remaining 178 people, about 51% of the new cases, are neither health care workers nor residents of long-term care facilities.

About half of those cases, or 51%, are linked to another known case or cluster.

Early in the pandemic, each person who tested positive for covid-19 had many “close contacts,” someone who has been within six feet of an infected person for at least 10 minutes, who were also potentially exposed, health department Director Dr. Debra Bogen said.

Because of physical distancing measures and other restrictions, the number of close contacts each infected person now averages around one, she said.

“We expect that number to increase as people leave their homes, return to work and have more contact with more people,” she said. “The number of close contacts could grow to 10 per case or more.”

Allegheny County has reported about 22 new cases per 100,000 residents over the most recent 14-day period, county Executive Rich Fitzgerald said.

State officials are considering regions for the yellow phase of reopening, which includes easing some physical distancing and business restrictions, if a region reports 50 or fewer new cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period.

Fitzgerald said that he is optimistic that Gov. Tom Wolf will announce Friday that Allegheny County, along with the rest of Southwest Pennsylvania, will be able to transition from the red phase to the yellow phase May 15.

That transition will be “a new normal,” he said.

“We still need to continue to do the mitigating strategies that so many people in this region have really done extremely well with,” he said. “We need to continue that, because if the numbers start to spike up again, then we would go back into the red.”

Jamie Martines is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jamie at 724-850-2867, jmartines@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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