HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s Department of Health is working on a plan to open public testing sites for the coronavirus, as more services shut down and the state sees a spike in people filing for unemployment compensation.
The Department of Labor and Industry said unemployment compensation claims exceeded 50,000 on Monday, and Tuesday’s filings were on course to exceed that number. In the entire first week of March, the state received barely 12,000 claims, according to federal data.
“It’s going to be a big mess, a double mess: illness and unemployment,” said John Dodds, director of the nonprofit Philadelphia Unemployment Project, which has been flooded with calls from people who were laid off.
Meanwhile, Amtrak is shutting down lines in Pennsylvania, and the number of confirmed cases in Pennsylvania approaches 100.
In response to the spread of the virus, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has ordered schools statewide closed, and sought a halt to all nonessential government and business activity. The federal government, meanwhile, has recommended against gatherings larger than 10 people.
The Department of Health and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency are in the process of organizing public testing sites, one in Philadelphia and one in Montgomery County, in hard-hit southeastern Pennsylvania.
The model will follow federal guidance with a drive-through concept with tests reserved for people who meet certain criteria, officials said.
“The goal of those two sites is really to test folks that fall within a certain symptom range,” Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, said during a news conference Tuesday at his agency’s headquarters.
Some hospitals are operating specimen-collecting sites, while others are operating their own testing laboratories.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is able to test for COVID-19, and Geisinger Health System can test their own patients; Health Network Laboratories/Lehigh Valley Health Network will be able to test in the next couple of days.