HARRISBURG – Governor Tom Wolf has announced that they have begun the process of testing every resident and employee for coronavirus in nursing and personal care homes for senior citizens. State Department of Health Secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine said, “We now have the capability in Pennsylvania to do the mass testing that we had hoped to do. We actually started this last week and we are starting to roll that out this week.”
Levine said some of the testing can be done in the state laboratory and many will be done at commercial laboratories. Dr. Levine explains why they just implemented this step in the fight against COVID-19, “We have not had the testing capabilities in Pennsylvania to perform this. Until the last 2 ½ weeks, it’s been extremely challenging to get the supplies and the swabs needed to be able to perform this significant amount of testing.”
And how long will this type of testing continue? Dr. Levine said, “We will be doing this as long as necessary. The funding will come from our resources, especially if we do the testing analysis in our labs.”
The virus is reported by Governor Wolf’s administration to have killed more than 2,600 residents of nursing homes or personal care homes. That constitutes about two-thirds of the state’s overall death toll.
