Pa. coronavirus case total rises to 41, including a child from Monroe County
Pennsylvania Commonwealth microbiologist Jared Seiders analyzes a PCR run inside the extraction lab at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories on Friday, March 6, 2020. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
41 people in Pennsylvania have now tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus, including a child from Monroe County.
Health Department officials announced the updated total on Friday.
Shortly after, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that all schools in the state would close for two weeks starting on Monday.
The child was tested and returned a presumptive positive result on Friday.
Health officials would not provide any more specific information about the location of the case other than it being in Monroe County.
But they said it was likely that based on the child’s age, that they are a school student.
“It’s a pediatric patient, by definition under age 18. The patient would be in school,” said Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health.
The coronavirus has been less common in children than in adults. The people who are at highest risk for the disease are people over age 80 and over age 60.
Schools in Monroe County were open on Friday.
Schools in Montgomery County, which has the highest number of total cases in the state, 17, were closed.
Health officials said a total of 41 people have now tested positive for the virus in Pennsylvania.
35 of the cases are presumptive positive and six cases, one in Delaware County, one in Wayne County and four in Montgomery County have been confirmed by the CDC.
The state has tested about 170 samples as of Friday, and another 130 are pending testing.
Dr. Levine said that testing is expanding thanks to commercial laboratories who are now processing test samples. The state lab is only testing samples from people who were in contact with a sick person or traveled somewhere where the disease is widespread, in accordance with criteria set by the CDC.
She said commercial labs like Quest and LabCorp are testing a wider range of samples, but they must be submitted by a healthcare provider.
Levine said based on the current testing criteria, the state has no backlog of tests. But if the CDC decides to update the testing criteria to include all residents in a given area, the department would not be able to keep up with demand.
“There are no backlogs of testing. In theory, if everyone in Pennsylvania needed to be tested, we couldn’t do that,” Levine said.
