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Residents of Pennsylvania will soon receive public messages about the COVID-19 pandemic via the National Wireless Emergency Alert System (WEA), Governor Tom Wolf announced Wednesday.
The National Public Safety System sends messages to mobile devices to notify people of a threat – such as inclement weather – or an Amber Alert.
State residents with mobile devices will receive their first statewide message today. The messages, available in English and Spanish, can also be targeted to specific areas – if a zip code has significantly higher COVID-19 rates, the system could alert people in that area with useful information on how respond.
“WEA is one more way to reach as many Pennsylvanians as possible to provide timely information on COVID-19,” Wolf said in a statement. “This tool is another tool in our toolkit to fight the pandemic and unite against COVID.”
The WEA system has been used almost 56,000 times since 2012 to alert the public of dangerous weather conditions, missing children and other situations.
Case Updates: Commonwealth and Philly Show Increases
The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 6,759 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total to 327,829 statewide. The majority of people who tested positive for COVID-19 were between 25 and 49 years old, with a peak in cases among 19 to 24 years old.
The state reported 144 new deaths on Wednesday, for a total of 10,095 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
There were 3,897 patients hospitalized with coronavirus statewide, including 826 in intensive care units. Most of the hospitalized patients were 65 years of age or older. The number of patients hospitalized per day has increased by nearly 2,300 since the end of September, the health department said.
There have been 32,915 cases of COVID-19 among residents of long-term care facilities and 6,466 cases among employees of long-term care facilities. Of all the deaths, 6,430 were in residents of nursing or personal care facilities.
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported an additional 1,246 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the city on Wednesday. This brings the number of confirmed cases to 63,026.
The department has confirmed eight more deaths in Philadelphia, bringing the number of residents who succumbed to the virus in Philadelphia to 1968. Of the total deaths, 926 (47%) were residents of long-term care facilities.
The Department of Public Health has reported 714 patients with the virus being treated in hospitals in Philadelphia, with a total of 51 on ventilators.
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