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Philadelphia bans indoor gatherings, broadens virus rules

“If we don’t do something to change the trajectory, the hospitals will become full. They’ll have difficulty treating people."

  • Michael Rubinkam/Associated Press
Men watch President-elect Joe Biden's acceptance speech on a cell phone, as they sit at a street table outside a bar in Philadelphia, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020.

 Rebecca Blackwell / AP Photo

Men watch President-elect Joe Biden's acceptance speech on a cell phone, as they sit at a street table outside a bar in Philadelphia, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020.

(Philadelphia) — Philadelphia is banning indoor gatherings of any size, public or private, as the city battles a resurgence of the coronavirus, officials announced Monday, warning that hospitals will become overrun by the end of the year without dramatic action.

The city also plans to prohibit indoor dining at restaurants, shutter casinos, gyms, museums and libraries, pause in-person instruction at colleges and high schools, and reduce occupancy at stores and religious institutions, the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, said at a news conference Monday.

The new restrictions take effect Friday and extend at least through the end of the year.

“If we don’t do something to change the trajectory of this epidemic, the hospitals will become full, they’ll have difficulty treating people, and we’ll have between several hundred and more than 1,000 deaths just by the end of this year,” Farley said.

The blanket prohibition on indoor gatherings of any kind — everything from holiday parties and football gatherings to baby showers and brunches — will not be enforced, city officials acknowledged. Farley said the city is seeking voluntary compliance instead.

The rate of new confirmed infections in Philadelphia is growing about 4% each day and spreading widely, including at small social gatherings, Farley said, predicting the weeks ahead will be “a little grim if we don’t take strong action.”

On the other side of the state, in the Pittsburgh area, the Allegheny County health director, Dr. Debra Bogen, called the spike in cases “beyond concerning” and begged residents to follow public health guidance, saying that “doing nothing is not an option.”

Pennsylvania has shattered daily case records recently. The state is reporting an average of 4,900 new infections per day, up nearly 120% in two weeks, according to AP analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project. The daily death toll has nearly doubled in that period, to about 42 per day, though it remains far below what it was last spring. Hospitalizations and the percentage of virus tests coming back positive are also up sharply.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has imposed a statewide mask mandate, occupancy restrictions at bars and restaurants and limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings, but, unlike governors in some other states, has not moved to reimpose the kinds of sweeping restrictions seen earlier in the pandemic.

Administration officials said the state’s health care system is not overburdened, even as hospitalizations have more than quadrupled since the beginning of October.

“We know we can’t overwhelm our health care system — something we did not do in the spring and that we are at this point not doing, but to ensure this, we must follow the mitigation efforts” that are already in place, said Wolf’s spokesperson, Lyndsay Kensinger.

A trade group, The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, said that statewide, COVID-related hospital stays are shorter, treatments are better and the surge in cases is more geographically spread out than it was in the spring, allowing hospitals to manage better.

In Philadelphia, pushback to the new restrictions began even before they were officially announced.

A Planet Fitness franchisee, National Fitness Partners, said Monday that it “makes absolutely no sense why our business, employees and members are being targeted,” asserting there’s no evidence of the virus spreading inside its facilities.

Mayor Jim Kenney acknowledged the economic hardship posed by another round of shutdowns but added: “I also think that dying of COVID is an extreme result of not doing what we need to do now to get the curve back down and flatten it out and get us back to some semblance of normal.”

The Philadelphia school district had planned to start returning K-12 students to the classroom, but said last week that schools will remain virtual for the foreseeable future in light of the explosion in cases.

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