PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – From reopening businesses to mass testing, state leaders are addressing people’s concerns when it comes to COVID-19.
Dr. Rachel Levine and Governor Tom Wolf held separate briefings on Tuesday, but the conversation for both was the same.
READ MORE: Local Organizations To Receive Funding For Violence Intervention Programs"We can open businesses, but if workers don't feel safe, they won't come. If customers don't feel safe, they won't come." -Gov. Tom Wolf on if the state reopens businesses now. He says the economy could be in worse shape if it happens too soon. @KDKA
— Nicole Ford (@NicoleFordTV) April 14, 2020
Wolf said there are a lot of ideas floating around on when to reopen the state’s economy and how, but his first concern is how to keep people safe.
Wolf tells KDKA that some essential workers are terrified to go to work because of COVID-19. He believes the way to build up the confidence in these workers is mass testing.
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At this point, Wolf says the state isn’t sure how to facilitate testing for the antibodies or the virus on that scale, but it is a discussion.
His advice to the state is to be patient, meanwhile Dr. Levine said the state is well on its way to flattening the curve.
“We have been able to flatten the curve in terms of the number of new cases that we are seeing. If you remember last week, we had over 1,900 new cases in a day and today we have 1,100 new cases in a day,” Levine said.
Both Levine and Wolf said this is not a one size fits all situation. When the time comes, they will look at reopening region by region or even municipality by municipality, but ask that everyone continues to stay home for now.
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