As Pennsylvania targets May 8th as the date to reopen select regions, the state’s secretary of health says increasing the number of tests is going to play a major role in that process.
During a briefing over the weekend, Dr. Rachel Levine said that by early May, the state hopes to reopen areas that have seen the lowest number of COVID-19 cases. But she also said that there needs to be more testing.
“I don’t have a specific number of tests, but we certainly will have to increase our testing,” Levine said. “We’ll particularly going to want to target those areas that the governor identifies that will go from red to yellow.”
“We want to make sure we’re able to do testing of even mildly symptomatic Pennsylvanians so we can prevent any potential outbreak in those regions,” Levine added.
One of the target goals that the Governor’s office will also be evaluating in order to reopen is having fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 people over a 14 day period.
For example, Butler County would need 95 or fewer new cases over the course of two weeks in order to reopen. Wolf did say, however, there are other metrics that will factor in to a decision for when a region could reopen.
