Apr 13, 2020 By The 2 min read

As the state hits the one-month mark since Gov. Tom Wolf ordered non-life-sustaining businesses to close their physical locations and restaurants and bars to stop dine-in services, state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said the spread of COVID-19 has slowed.

“This has been a very difficult and hard sacrifice for Pennsylvanians, but the sacrifice is working,” Levine said Monday. “Our case count numbers continue to grow, but we aren’t seeing the doubling of cases … like other countries and states have seen.”

Although the number of deaths, too, is growing, Levine said without business closures and social distancing policies, “it really could be much, much worse.”

“If we stopped those efforts now, our health systems will become overwhelmed, and then more will be lost to this dangerous virus,” she said.

Her remarks came as the state’s number of new cases grew by 1,366 to 24,199 and 17 additional deaths were reported, bringing the total to 524 across Pennsylvania.

Locally, most counties saw an increase in positive cases reported between Sunday and Monday: Fayette from 54 to 57; Washington from 68 to 69; Westmoreland from 223 to 228 and Allegheny from 857 to 856.

Greene County’s case count has remained at 23 since Saturday.

The state Department of Corrections reported its first inmate death from COVID-19 on Monday, at the State Correctional Institution at Phoenix in Montgomery County.