More than 10,000 Philadelphians infected with the coronavirus; New Jersey won’t start reopening for ‘weeks’

More than 10,000 Philadelphians have tested positive for the coronavirus since the infection was first detected in the city six weeks ago, Mayor Jim Kenney announced Tuesday, as New Jersey moved closer to a staggering total of 100,000 cases and officials throughout the region called for federal help with testing supplies.

Philadelphia could be “not at the worst, but near the worst” of the epidemic, officials said, indicating they hope to know by the end of the week whether the number of new cases is beginning to decline.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey all need a much higher ability to do diagnostic testing for the virus, which is seen as critical to reopening the economy and loosening stay-at-home orders, their leaders warned Tuesday. Swabs used for testing and chemicals needed to analyze results have been in short supply. In one instance, Philadelphia placed an order for 10,000 swabs from a company and received only 500, officials said.

Gov. Tom Wolf said Pennsylvania officials are trying to work with federal emergency officials and the private sector to get more supplies. Gov. Phil Murphy said New Jersey, where 73 testing sites are operating, will have to “at least double” its testing capacity before he believes it will be safe enough to restart the economy — and that the state “needs the feds in a big way” to do that.

» READ MORE: Is it even possible to social distance at the Jersey Shore?

Such pleas for help came a day after mixed messages on testing came from the White House, where President Donald Trump accused governors requesting aid of playing politics while Vice President Mike Pence assured the states that federal help was coming. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo met with Trump in Washington on Tuesday to discuss how the states and federal government would collaborate to increase testing.

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The Senate passed a new coronavirus aid package Tuesday evening, expected to reach Trump’s desk this week, that includes a requirement that the White House create a national testing strategy. The $484 billion stimulus package, on which the House is expected to vote on Thursday, will replenish a small business payroll fund and provide new money for hospitals and testing.

Testing can show how much of the population is infected and how the virus is circulating. In Philadelphia, for instance, between 1,200 and 1,500 people are being tested per day, but Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said he would like 5,000 or 10,000 to be tested per day.

Wolf and Kenney also said federal aid for contact tracing was needed. “If we don’t have the data, we don’t know what we’re up against,” Kenney said on CNN.

A mass testing site in the Northeast began operating Monday, Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine said, and the state may consider opening other such sites. Wolf has also talked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health officials about the effectiveness of antibody, or serological, testing and when the state might be able to reliably conduct such screenings. Experts are still determining how much immunity antibodies offer, Levine said.

Pennsylvania reported newly calculated death numbers on Tuesday that include both probable and confirmed coronavirus deaths, raising the state’s toll to 1,264. Of those, 300 deaths are considered probable; the state has gathered the new data from “a collection of reports over the past number of weeks,” Levine said. In all, Pennsylvania reported 1,296 new positive cases on Tuesday for a total of 34,528.

The number of new daily cases confirmed in Philadelphia remained about level on Tuesday at 475. While predicting cases would continue to increase, Farley said he was “hopeful, though, that we’re near the worst of this and will get better from here.”

Kenney said reaching 10,000 confirmed cases in the city was “very scary.”

“My message now is simply, thank you,” he said. “I see hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians doing everything they can do.… We are feeding each other. We are staying away from each other. We are wearing masks. And we are doing what needs to be done.”

Some Philadelphia hospitals that are at or near capacity are experiencing shortages in staffing, particularly with intensive care unit nurses, Farley said, though he did not identify which facilities.

“In some cases there may be hospitals that literally have a vacant bed but they cannot provide the staffing to support a patient being in that bed," he said.

» READ MORE: Here’s how low Philly’s case count has to be for the state to consider reopening Southeastern Pa.

The city’s hospitals have enough combined capacity to handle all the patients, and Farley is encouraging them to transfer patients to other facilities as needed. Four patients had been admitted to the overflow hospital at Temple University’s Liacouras Center as of Tuesday morning, he said.

About 2,670 coronavirus patients were hospitalized statewide as of Tuesday, down from 3,507 on Monday. Levine cautioned not to read too much into one’s day data, but said it could be promising.

“If there is a continued trend in terms of a decrease of hospitalizations, that of course will be a really good sign,” she said. Officials said they continue to closely watch the Philadelphia region’s hospitals, as they remain the hardest-hit in the state.

As the virus has filled beds and taxed staff, it has also caused revenue-generating procedures to be canceled, and the hospitals fighting the virus are struggling financially. Tower Health, citing the loss of as much as half its revenue, on Tuesday announced the furlough of at least 1,000 employees in its Berks County-based seven-hospital system.

And Delaware County became the first in the Philadelphia region to institute temporary furloughs as a result of the pandemic, taking about 400 workers off the job for “a few weeks.” As more than a million Pennsylvanians have become unemployed, Wolf said Tuesday that the unemployment office has increased staffing and is working to get call wait times down to under 10 minutes.

New Jersey reported its highest number of deaths in a single day — 379 — and looked likely to reach 100,000 confirmed cases within the next several days. There are “still weeks to go” before the state’s economy begins reopening, Murphy said Tuesday.

“Heavy hospitalization” is expected to last until May, said state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli. The state’s surge of patients has shifted from Northern to Central New Jersey, where most critical care beds are now full and at least one major hospital is reporting it is overwhelmed and diverting patients.

Some may be sent to South Jersey. A field hospital in Atlantic City opened Tuesday and was set to accept patients, Murphy said, but health officials don’t expect it to be as busy as those in other parts of the state.

A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday showed that Murphy’s approval rating has skyrocketed to 71% and that more than 90% of residents agree with his major social distancing measures.

“Things won’t pop back as they were,” said Murphy. “Going back to the way things were, and doing nothing, would be our greatest danger. The new normal won’t look like the old normal.”

Staff writers Laura McCrystal, Sean Collins Walsh, Vinny Vella, Rob Tornoe, and Harold Brubaker contributed to this article.