Apr 17, 2020 By The 3 min read

New data from the Department of Health shows how many people in each county have been tested for COVID-19.

In Fayette County, 1,286 residents have been tested – 60 of them positive and 1,226 of them negative.

Using 2019 Census estimates, that’s about .99% of the population – a smidge below the statewide level of 1.1%.

“We’d like to do much more widespread testing,” state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Thursday, noting the state has had a recent decrease in the number of tests received, as well as difficulty getting the reagents and chemicals necessary to perform tests at mass testing sites.

Fayette’s percentage of those tested is among the highest of local counties. Westmoreland County has seen .94% of its population tested; Greene .86%, Washington .66% and Allegheny 1.1%.

Levine said there aren’t resources to perform testing on those who don’t have COVID-19 symptoms.

“No one has the resources to do that,” she said.

However, even with testing available only for those who have COVID-19 symptoms, Levine said she believes mitigation efforts are working.

“We’re looking at the number of cases, the number of positives, the percent of cases that are positive in each area, and we’re also looking at something called syndromic surveillance, which is emergency department visits with specific diagnoses of coronavirus or COVID-19 but also influenza-like illness and fever and cough,” she said. “They are all going down, and so we’re very confident that we have flattened the curve.”

There were 1,245 new cases reported in Pennsylvania, where the total number of COVID-19 cases now stands at 27,735.

The state also reported 60 additional deaths from the virus, bringing the total to 707.

Local counties saw a modest increase in cases, Fayette from 58 to 60; Greene from 23 to 24; Washington from 71 to 73; Westmoreland from 237 to 240 and Allegheny from 904 to 925.

Twelve more people died in Allegheny County, with its total at 38, according to the DOH. In Westmoreland County, the DOH reported 13 total deaths.

County Coroner Kenneth Bacha, however, reported Westmoreland’s COVID-19 deaths as 19. Bacha is providing real-time updates on his county website.

Levine also responded to a question about whether stay-at-home orders are hampering the development of “herd immunity” – the resistance to a contagious disease because a high number of people are immune to it.

Developing that type of immunity, she said, would mean that a “significant number” of people in the population have had the virus.

“If we had let it spread through the community to get herd immunity, then we wouldn’t have 27,000 cases, we’d have 70,000 cases and we wouldn’t have … 700 deaths, we’d have two or three times that,” Levine said. “Just letting it spread through the community to develop herd immunity would have been potentially catastrophic for people in the state and then would have completely overwhelmed our health care system.”

She also offered advice to owners and managers of essential businesses about how to handle customers who come in, but are not wearing masks, which a state order mandated Wednesday.

“We recommend that if someone comes to a retailer, to a store, grocery store and doesn’t have a mask that they be asked to go home and get a mask,” she said.

For more information on COVID-19, including state data, visit health.pa.gov.