Pennsylvania reports 1,369 new coronavirus cases, changes how it reports deaths
Share this post:
Pennsylvania added more 1,300 coronavirus cases, state health officials said Thursday, pushing the statewide total past 37,000.
The 1,369 new positive cases were recorded between 12 a.m. Wednesday and 12 a.m. Thursday. The state’s running case count now stands at 37,053.
The Department of Health had begun providing the number of confirmed deaths and probable deaths, the latter including individuals who were never tested for covid-19 but for whom physicians and coroners listed the virus as the cause or contributing cause of death.
That decision was made based on guidance and definitions by the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine.
“Some of the probable cases are actually still under investigation, meaning additional data is still being gathered,” Levine said. “Some of these cases will remain a ‘probable’ case after investigation.”
Thursday’s death count stood at 1,421 – a decrease of more than 200 after officials made the call to not include the number of probable cases.
Some cases previously listed as probable were found to, after further review, need more investigation before they could be attributed to covid-19.
Allegheny County also saw a discrepancy with death numbers, subtracting five from the previous day’s total. Officials said there were duplicates in the state’s reporting system from which the county gets its numbers. County health officials said 69 people have died from the virus in the county.
The county added 61 new positive cases on Thursday.
Levine said some counties that saw decreases or shifts in their death totals that cound stem from finding that a someone who died in that county lived in a different county. She said the CDC dictates that deaths be assigned to the county in which that person lived, not the one in which they died.
Also under CDC guidance, the Department of Health has been reporting confirmed cases and probable cases. The definitions are similar to those for confirmed and probable deaths. Probable cases are individuals who have symptoms of covid-19 and have been in contact with a confirmed case but they themselves have not had a coronavirus test.
As of 12 a.m. Thursday, Levine said, there were 36,665 confirmed cases in the state and 388 probable cases. She noted that probable cases make up less than 2% of the state’s cases, and officials will use the confirmed case count to guide the state’s regional reopening plans.