Philadelphia Working On Plan For Contact Tracing As City Reports Largest Death Count In Any Single Day
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Philadelphia is looking toward the future as the battle against COVID-19 continues. Health officials are working on a plan for contact tracing of coronavirus cases.
The city is making progress toward the goal of reopening safely, although the death toll is still climbing. Philadelphia reported its largest death count in any single day from the coronavirus as nearly 1,000 people have now died from COVID-19.
Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced another 78 deaths on Wednesday, raising the city's death toll to 986. Farley also reported 242 new cases, bringing the citywide total to 18,779.
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Dr. Farley says the high number came mostly from matching two different databases that show cases reported to the city and death certificates.
"Much of this appears to be people who were reported to us as positive before and later we found out that they died," Dr. Farley explained. "We do that match of these databases about once a week so there will be periodic times when we get more deaths than usual. This is the largest number reported in any single day."
The health commissioner says the deaths came between April 21 and May 7. Despite Wednesday's high number, the death toll trend still appears to be going down.
"The peak, the worst time of number of deaths per day, is a little later than the number of the peak for cases, which is what we would expect," Dr. Farley said.
Dr. Farley announced Wednesday the city will be putting in place systems for contact tracing.
"We will continue to expand the availability of testing to the degree that we can and we will be putting in place systems for contact tracing," Farley said.
A set number of contact tracer hires hasn't been established and will depend on the budget, but health experts say their role will be critical once the number of cases per day are manageable.
"Primary skills we're looking for really are interpersonal skills," Farley said. "They would deal with people's fears and concerns and give them appropriate information."
Farley also had a warning for those who think the virus will be gone after we get past this wave of the epidemic.
"That's not the case — success doesn't mean no virus," Farley said. "Unfortunately, the virus is going to be around until we have a vaccine that we can give broadly to people."
The health commissioner did say, though, he believes the city can come up with a system to reopen in a safe way when the virus is at low levels.
"What success looks like in the future is the virus is at such a low level, we can resume most of our activities and most people are not going to get infected, so suppression of the virus is what we're shooting for here," Farley said.
While the city is far from the commonwealth's recommended criteria of 55 cases per day for reopening, even when that goal is reached, establishing confidence in the community will continue to be a priority.
"If we get to the point of opening in the southeast region, people still have to feel comfortable enough and safe enough to go out to a restaurant, to go out to a retail outlet," Mayor Jim Kenney said. "People will have to feel safe going out and doing the things they used to do in a different way."
Statewide, COVID-19 cases are nearing 59,000 as the death toll has now topped 3,900.
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