Wolf, task force urge lawmakers to promote COVID vaccination
Gov. Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania's coronavirus task force are asking state lawmakers to urge their constituents to get vaccinated — noting the rapid spread of the highly contagious delta variant — while one of the state's most populous counties acknowledged Friday that it mishandled students' confidential COVID-19 health data.
Wolf and the task force, which includes Democratic and Republican appointees from the House and Senate, asked members of the General Assembly to “use every tool at your disposal, starting now,” to promote the COVID-19 vaccines on social media, in printed materials and at local events.
“We are at a pivotal moment in this pandemic — a moment that has already passed in states like Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana — where we can either stand by as COVID evolves into a disease that hospitalizes people at rates rivaling the COVID we knew in 2020, or we can redouble our vaccination efforts and work together to protect the progress we have made, and avoid the consequences of widespread infection,” said the letter, released Friday.
New COVID-19 cases have more than tripled over the past two weeks, to an average of about 725 per day, according to Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Hospitalizations have started to rise again, too, increasing by more than a third over the past 10 days, according to state data.
New cases and hospitalizations are still a fraction of what they were at the height of the pandemic last winter.
The pace of vaccinations, meanwhile, has slowed dramatically to about 12,500 people per day. Nearly 63% of Pennsylvania adults are fully vaccinated, according to federal data.
The letter from Wolf and the task force warned that a resurgent virus could wreak havoc on nursing homes, threaten the state's work...