When Will Bucks Co. Move To Green? Officials Weigh In

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — Bucks County is currently meeting all the state metrics required to ease coronavirus restrictions, and officials said Thursday they are hoping to move to the plan's least-restrictive green phase as early as next week.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health website, Bucks County is meeting four out of four metrics on a chart featuring requirements to move the plan's next stage. Bucks County is currently in the yellow phase of coronavirus mitigation. The third and final phase is green.

Metrics watched include the number of new coronavirus cases and available hospital beds.

Neighboring Delaware and Montgomery counties also meet all four metrics, while Philadelphia, Chester, and Lancaster counties all failed to meet the standards in at least one category.

On Thursday, Bucks County officials said they hope those numbers will be enough for Gov. Tom Wolf to move the county to his coronavirus plan's green phase by next Friday.

"We have been ready and we're ready to move now," said Bucks County Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Diane Ellis Marseglia. "This has been difficult but, the social distancing and wearing masks — that's what's gotten us here."

David Damsker, director of the Bucks County Department of Health, said he agrees that Bucks County is ready to move to green.

"We feel like we're ready to go," he said. "We're hoping the governor does not completely tie us in to the other four counties in southeast Pennsylvania. We do believe we're ready to move next Friday."

Last week, Bucks County was part of the last batch of counties in Pennsylvania to move from the plan's most restrictive red phase to the yellow phase, which allows some businesses and other public spaces to reopen with some health restrictions.

The reopening plan set forth by Wolf requires that an area have fewer than 50 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people over the course of 14 days. In Bucks County, that requires an average of about 22 new cases per day.

While that number seemed wildly out of reach just weeks ago, it's a mark Bucks County has been hitting in recent days. There were 18 new cases of the coronavirus reported on Wednesday, 26 on Tuesday, and an average of 18 per day on Sunday and Monday.

Damsker said during the online news conference Thursday that there have been no known cases of COVID-19 in Bucks County among people who caught the virus while attending one of the several recent racial justice protests.

He said there have been "a couple more" people who caught the virus through household contacts traced back to a Bucks County resident who attended college parties at the Jersey Shore over Memorial Day weekend.

"We anticipated that would be the case," Damsker said. "We're hoping now that that was a couple of weeks ago, there won't be many more than what we see right now."

Statistics, charts and other coronavirus-related information for Bucks County can be found on the county's coronavirus data portal.

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