State Defers to Locals….For Now

Deferring to local control rather than one size fits all mandates from Harrisburg, the Wolf Administration has offered the following comments relative to the recent covid variants:

Pa Health Secretary Beam said the state is following the CDC’s lead and is recommending, not mandating, schools require face masks.

She said the overriding goal is to keep schools open and for kids to be educated in classrooms.

Outside of schools, Beam said Pennsylvania’s plan for dealing with COVID-19 continues to rely on encouraging vaccination rather than mandates, although she added “all options are on the table”.

While total counts remain low, 97% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, and 99% of deaths involve unvaccinated people.

52.6% of the full Pennsylvania population is vaccinated, as are 63.2% of people 18 or older and 84% of people 65 or older.