Montco Coronavirus: 48 New Cases Wednesday

NORRISTOWN, PA — Montgomery County's COVID-19 dashboard is set to be back up and running Wednesday afternoon after a six-day outage left residents with limited information.

In a news conference Wednesday, Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said an error with the system was noticed Monday.

She said many duplicate cases had been overlooked in the July 2 data, and it took county officials until Wednesday to double check and reconcile all the numbers.

The daily breakdown during the outage is as follows:

• July 2 — 32 cases, 5 from long-term care facilities
• July 3 — 42 cases, 2 from long-term care facilities
• July 4 — 27 cases, 3 from long-term care facilities
• July 5 — 1 case, none from long-term care facilities
• July 6 — 41 cases, 2 from long-term care facilities
• July 7 — 40 cases, 7 long-term care facilities
• July 8 — 48 cases, 6 from long-term care facilities

All told, 231 new cases were reported in the 7-day period of July 2 to July 8, bringing the county's total to 8,626.

Also reported on Wednesday were four more deaths resulting from the virus. Arkoosh said two of those people died in a hospital and two died in long-term care facilities. All told, 804 people have died from the virus in Montgomery County.

Arkoosh said as of Wednesday, approximately 69 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in a Montgomery County hospital. Of those, 10 are using ventilators.

Overall, hospitalizations are slowly trending downward: "a very encouraging sign," Arkoosh said.

Further, she said, the Montgomery County correctional facility has reported no new cases.

Testing

Montgomery County on Monday opened six walk-up coronavirus testing sites that offer testing for COVID-19 at no cost.

The testing sites are available to people of all ages without a prescription or insurance. Residents can begin making appointments for testing at 8:30 a.m. each day.

Testing is also available at no cost through 12 CVS and Rite Aid locations in Montgomery County. These drive-thru testing sites are available only to people 18-years-old and older.

This Saturday, the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium will also offer free testing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Siloam Baptist Church at 1329 Willow Street. Testing at the church is available to everyone regardless of appointment, age or a doctor's order or prescription or ability to pay.

Green Phase

On June 29, Pennsylvania entered the Green Phase of its reopening plan. Arkoosh said the goal of the green phase is "carefully and cautiously moving forward to our new normal."

Arkoosh implored residents to do five things in order to continue the Green Phase of reopening, protect businesses and allow schools to reopen in the fall:

• Wear a mask (Pennsylvania's universal mask order requires masks to be worn when indoors or outdoors when social distance can't be maintained)
• Maintain a social distance of at least 6-feet from others.
• Keep hands clean using soap and water or hand sanitizer.
• Get tested
• Cooperate with contact tracing

Arkoosh said restaurants and businesses are being monitored for compliance to orders in the Green Phase. Residents who see restaurants disregarding guidance are encouraged to report the business to county health officials by emailing covid19@montcopa.org.

The commissioner said inspectors will investigate reports and close restaurants if they're caught being noncompliant twice.

All reports are kept anonymous, she said.

Rental Assistance

In the news conference Wednesday, Arkoosh said she and her counterparts have written to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf asking him to extend the moratorium on evictions, and she is "hopeful that will be the case."

While answers remain unclear on the moratorium, Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with the Pennsylvania Housing Finance agency to provide financial relief for renters who qualify.

"More than 13,000 of our renters experience extreme cost burden with rent representing more than 50% of their income at any given time," Arkoosh said in a statement Monday. "We hope to help as many people as possible to stay safe and healthy in their homes during the pandemic by providing much needed economic relief."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article stated 2,231 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in Montgomery County in the last week. The correct total is 231.