Pennsylvania surpasses 1 million COVID cases, state Department of Health announces

Pennsylvania has become the latest state to exceed 1 million coronavirus cases on Thursday as the commonwealth’s death toll also inched closer to the 25,000 mark.

The state on Thursday reported 3,623 new and probable cases, raising the total to 1,000,240, according to the Department of Health.

It's been a full year since COVID first appeared in the state, and although vaccines have altered the conversation, Thursday’s case count is an acute reminder that the virus has not gone away. Daily infections have risen more than 10% in two weeks and hospitalizations are beginning to rise once again.

"We are continuing to see numbers going in the wrong direction," said Dr. Frederic Bushman, co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens.

Other states to have reached the one million case benchmark include California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and Ohio.

Pennsylvania endured a strong surge of cases when the pandemic initially took hold last spring, but that was ultimately dwarfed by an aggressive fall and winter resurgence that struck all corners of the state and drastically driven up the case tally.

The case count surpassed the half-million mark on Dec. 15, when it reached 509,320.

Since the initial spring surge, Pennsylvania has massively expanded its capacity for testing, leading to significantly higher daily case counts. As of May 1, an average of 13,579 tests were being conducted daily. As of Wednesday, the daily average was more than 74,000 tests, and in late November the average surpassed 100,000.

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Now, we're in a race against time to get people vaccinated before mutations spread. As of Thursday, vaccine providers have administered 4,614,946 total vaccine doses; 1,624,654 people have been fully vaccinated, and more than 85,000 people are receiving vaccinations every day.

Pennsylvania struggled early on with a vaccine rollout that was among the slowest in the nation, and it has shifted strategies multiple times in recent months in an effort to get shots into people's arms faster though the state is still currently working  to complete phase 1A of the vaccination prioritization list — which currently includes health care workers, long-term care facility residents, people 65 and older, and those with underlying health conditions.

The state also learned this week that it will not get nearly as many doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as the federal government initially projected. The state said it will receive about 66,000 doses next week, not 200,000 like it had planned for.

Pennsylvania has used its federal allotment of the single-shot vaccine to inoculate educators and childcare workers and said the next shipment of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would inoculate police officers, firefighters, grocery workers, meat processing plant workers, and agricultural workers.

Will this affect easing of restrictions?

This tragic milestone has also been reached ahead of Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to significantly loosen coronavirus safety restrictions for the rest of Pennsylvania starting April 4.

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Those changes include increasing capacity for outdoor events and allowing restaurants to increase seating from 50% to 75% of their capacity indoors, serve alcohol without food, resume bar service, and discontinue the mandatory 11 p.m. last call. Gyms, casinos, and other entertainment venues can also increase their capacities to 75%.

Additionally, indoor events may be held with 25% of maximum occupancy, up from 15%, outdoor events with 50% of a space’s capacity, up from 20%.

It’s unclear if the recent rise in cases will lead to additional mitigation changes.

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