We haven’t provided an update on the Coronavirus in over a week and no one even noticed! Since the state and county are happy to ignore the math that the state established to reach the yellow phase of reopening, what is the point really? All we heard was “science and data” and then the data didn’t seem to matter much anymore.
And another thing, what happened to the agreement among several northeast states, which included Pennsylvania, to coordinate the reopening process? Oh yea, that was ignored too.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey haven’t been on the same page at all. New Jersey opened its beaches sending thousands of Pennsylvanians across the border and Governor Wolf discouraged people to go. But let’s just ignore the fact that when it came down to it, each state did its own thing ignoring the “data and science” a few miles away over state lines.
But anyway…
So where does Montgomery County stand as of now? Here is the latest as of Friday, June 12th.
| DATE | Daily Positive Test Results | Goal to Move to Yellow Phase |
| 30-May | 89 | 30 |
| 31-May | 51 | 30 |
| 1-Jun | 32 | 30 |
| 2-Jun | 94 | 30 |
| 3-Jun | 97 | 30 |
| 4-Jun | 64 | 30 |
| 5-Jun | 83 | 30 |
| 6-Jun | 82 | 30 |
| 7-Jun | 33 | 30 |
| 8-Jun | 33 | 30 |
| 9-Jun | 73 | 30 |
| 10-Jun | 51 | 30 |
| 11-Jun | 45 | 30 |
| 12-Jun | 74 | 30 |
| | | |
| 14 DAY TOTAL | 901 | |
| 14 DAY AVERAGE | 64.35714286 | |
| 14 Day AVERAGE GOAL | 30 | |
| DIFFERENCE | 34.35714286 | |
Above are two charts that track the past 14 days (as of June 12). The goal was to average 30 cases per day over 14-days. Montgomery County is still off that target by 34.
Now the state has a chart that tracks four criteria to reach green. They are:
- Stable, decreasing, or low confirmed case counts, past two weeks compared to previous two weeks
- Contacts of cases are being monitored
- PCR positivity rate is < 10% in past 14 days (this is the test for the virus)
- Hospital bed use is 90% or lower per district population
Montgomery County currently meets all of those criteria according to the state.
Montgomery County has been lumped in with several other counties that were supposed to move together through reopening since they share a workforce, etc. Only Chester County doesn’t currently meet the criteria to move to green. Its case total is either not going down or hasn’t stabilized. Schuylkill County has already been scheduled to move to green on June 19th.
We had looked at the above charts last week and Montgomery County had all checkmarks. However, during the Thursday, June 11th press conference, County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh reported that the PCR (positive rate for the test for the virus) was 13.4%. This is another example of state and county data being in conflict with one another.
During a Thursday, June 11th press conference, County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh projected that Montgomery County would be able to move into the green phase by early July.
The total number of cases in the county as of June 12th is 7,756 (this number includes all cases, not current cases). There have been a total of 768 confirmed cases due to Coronavirus. The local data is as follows:
- Ambler is at 124 cases and 15 deaths
- Lower Gwynedd is at 150 cases and 30 deaths
- Upper Dublin is at 166 cases and 18 deaths
- Whitpain is at 123 and 14 deaths
There is a press conference scheduled for today at 3:00 p.m. We will have another update after that.