Pennsylvania adds more than 1,500 new covid cases in past 2 days

Pennsylvania’s coronavirus cases increased by 1,594 over the past two days, according to a report Monday from the state’s Department of Health.

The department said 918 cases were added Sunday and 676 were announced Monday.

The state has seen 156,826 covid-19 cases since the pandemic began in March.

From Sept. 21-27, the state has processed 193,277 tests, with 5,572 positives detected.

According to figures from the state’s covid-19 site, there were three new deaths related to covid-19 reported Sunday and one new one — in Westmoreland County — added Monday. In all, there have been 8,107 covid-related deaths in the state.

On Monday, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that Pennsylvania has stockpiled ​personal protective equipment (PPE​) — such as protective clothing, helmets, gloves, face shields, goggles, facemasks and respirators — to fight the pandemic in the coming months.

“I want all Pennsylvanians to know that the commonwealth is prepared now for battling the ongoing pandemic that is covid-19 and that preparedness extends to a possible resurgence this fall,” Wolf said in a news release. “There are still many unknowns with this virus, and we can’t control those, but we can control what we know and we know that by being ready with enough PPE, we can protect our health care workers, first responders and other essential workers and not overwhelm our health care system.”

The state said it has distributed nearly 5.4 million N95 masks, more than 736,000 gowns, 2.75 million procedure masks, 7.7 million gloves, 1.3 million face shields and just under 1 million bottles of hand sanitizer.

Among 977 nursing and personal care homes in 61 Pennsylvania counties, there have been 22,803 resident cases of covid-19 and 5,026 cases among workers. Out of the state’s total deaths, 5,432 have occurred in residents there.

Over the past two days, Centre County had the most new cases, with 158. It was followed by Philadelphia (149), Allegheny (133), Delaware (78) and Lancaster (76).

According to the state’s covid-19 tracking website, there are currently 481 Pennsylvanians in the hospital for the virus, with 64 of them on ventilators. According to the state, there are 4,966 operational ventilators in the state, with 1,120 (22.6%) currently in use for all illnesses.

There have been 1,855,491 residents of Pennsylvania that have tested negative for covid-19 out of 2,012,317 total unique tests. That makes for a 92.2% negativity rate.