Those choosing to ignore state social distancing, mask and shelter at home requirements will only delay the Philadelphia region’s reopening, according to state and county officials.

Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf has laid out a reopening approach heavily dependent on getting the number of new COVID-19 cases down region by region.

For Delaware County and its neighboring counties in the southeast–Philadelphia, Montgomery, Chester and Bucks, that means lowering the COVID-19 levels to 50 new cases or less per day per 100,000 people for 14 days.

Delaware County, which has about 550,000 residents, would need to show 20 new cases or less per day to meet the requirement to ease state restrictions. In the last week, the county’s been averaging 100 to 130 new COVID-19 cases per day.

“If we don’t adhere to these measures, we will be farther from the end than we are today,” said Delaware County Council Chairman Brian Zidek, speaking at an April 24 Zoom press conference.  “Our efforts have shown signs of success and will continue to do so. We need to persevere and not become complacent.”

Click here to see a video of the April 24 County Council press conference.

Jean Kasner, director of the Chester County Health Department, said they and the state will be tracking new COVID-19 cases and other health data, “to report how close we are getting, but the more we do within these practices the shorter the time it will take to get over them.”

Delaware County Councilman Kevin Madden emphasized that all counties in a region must show the lower number of cases to have restrictions eased.

Other requirements to have regional restrictions eased include:

• Enough testing so that people with symptoms can be tested, including those at high risk, health care staff and first responders;
• A contact tracing infrastructure so cluster outbreaks can be identified. This is to make sure that proper isolation and quarantine can be implemented;
• Identification of an area’s high-risk locations, including prisons, personal care homes, skilled nursing facilities and other congregate care settings.  These facilities must also have adequate safe guards in place such as staff training, employee screening, visitor procedures and screenings, and adequate supplies of personal protective equipment to support continued operations.

“They’re going to be looking at what our hospitals look like, what our capacities look like,” added Councilman Kevin Madden.

The commonwealth also will rely on a modeling dashboard under development by Carnegie Mellon University to take a regional and sector-based approach to re-openings, the easing of restrictions and public health response.

Click here to read the state’s entire plan for regional re-openings.

A component of the data monitoring will be adequate testing and contact tracing to make sure that as a region reopens, it doesn’t relapse, forcing a return to greater restrictions.

Kasner said it would be ideal to test everyone for the virus, but there aren’t enough specimen kits available, limiting tests to those who are symptomatic and at higher risk of infection.

Councilwoman Elaine Schaeffer recognized everyone’s frustration with the state’s COVID-19 containment procedures and the devastating effect economically on people’s lives, but urged everyone not to rush the reopening, as she pointed to the daily death statistics.

“Those are someone’s mother, father, sister, brother. Those are our residents. If we rush this, that number is going to continue to go up.

“This isn’t just about getting the flu and it’s not about missing work,” she said.  “Our neighbors and our residents are dying.”