COVID In Philadelphia: Health Commissioner Concerned Hospitals May Come Under Strain In Next Few Weeks
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- As the surge of COVID-19 cases continues in our region, Philadelphia health officials are concerned we could see even more cases and hospitalizations over the next few weeks. This comes as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced Tuesday a new testing initiative aimed at identifying cases quickly.
The City of Philadelphia is seeing rising cases of COVID-19 every day and Tuesday's latest numbers are no exception.
"We have identified 601 new cases of the coronavirus infection in Philadelphia residents by the PCR test, bringing us to a total of 67,025 confirmed cases since the beginning of the epidemic," Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said.
Farley says hospitalizations are also increasing, with more patients being admitted than discharged. There is also growing concern about cases increasing after the Thanksgiving holiday.
"Still concerned that hospitals may come under strain just in the next two to three weeks," Farley said.
Testing capacity has been stretched in recent weeks, with folks flocking to get tested before Thanksgiving. Officials say labs and testing sites were backed up during the influx.
"With that increased demand, the labs did get backed up and so there was a slow turnaround for a couple labs in particular, a couple of big labs. That's too long," Farley said.
Meanwhile, Wolf announced a new effort to increase testing capacity throughout the state.
"The Department of Health has expanded its contract with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare to deploy five regional testing strike teams throughout Pennsylvania over the next 12 weeks," Wolf said.
Still, health officials say stay home and stay safe this holiday season.
"You should be celebrating with members of your immediate household only, not by getting together with people of other households," Farley warned. "There's still going to be a very high rates of disease even if we're successful in lowering it between now and then. And if you're mixing households, you're gonna be adding risk."
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