Yes, wear a mask outside, officials say | Coronavirus Newsletter

TL;DR: Officials are now saying you should be wearing cloth masks in public, but still limit leaving your home to just essential outings. Area hospitals are furloughing employees and some are forcing nonmedical staffers to come to work. Inside those hospitals, health care workers don’t have the supplies they need. Pennsylvania asked FEMA for nearly 500,000 N95 masks for medical workers, but it’s still 380,000 short.

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— Ellie Silverman (@esilverman11, health@inquirer.com)

😷 People are urged to wear cloth masks in public, the CDC and Pennsylvania officials say.

🛑 You will not have to pay co-pays, deductibles, or an out-of-pocket costs for COVID-19 inpatient hospital treatment if you have health insurers Independence Blue Cross or Horizon.

🏥 Pennsylvania asked FEMA for nearly 500,000 N95 masks for medical workers, but it’s still 380,000 short. The state also needs more ventilators.

💰Pennsylvania will stop paying 9,000 state employees by the end of next week.

♻️ Philly will start collecting recycling every other week starting Monday.

🍷 Pennsylvania’s liquor board reported selling almost a month’s worth of wine and spirits in only 17 days. But people are somehow running out of booze, and when they cross the border to buy alcohol, Delaware police are pulling them over.

📈As of Friday evening, there are more than 4,700 reported cases in the Philadelphia area. Track the spread here.

All Pennsylvanians should wear a cloth mask if they have to leave their home, Gov. Tom Wolf said today, urging residents to follow the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But you should not wear paper surgical masks or N95 masks, Wolf and Health Secretary Rachel Levine said. Those kinds of masks need to be reserved for essential workers, like doctors treating COVID-19 patients, my colleague Erin McCarthy reports. Instead, officials say residents should make their own (here is what you need to know about homemade face masks and how to make them). After all, Pennsylvania asked FEMA for nearly 500,000 N95 masks for medical workers, but it’s still 380,000 short.

“Masks help prevent people from sharing illnesses,” Wolf said. “They don’t do a great job at preventing people from getting sick and they’re not foolproof, so it’s critical that our first act … is to ask ourselves whether we really need to leave our house.”

President Donald Trump announced today that the CDC now recommends cloth masks, but wearing a covering is voluntary.

Nonclinical workers are some local hospitals are facing furloughs, even as health care workers are desperately needed to help those sick with COVID-19.

This is because hospitals across the state are collectively losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a month, said Andy Carter, president and chief executive of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.

Some workers affected, according to my colleagues Ellie Rushing and Jason Laughlin include:

Other hospitals, meanwhile, are requiring nonmedical employees to show up for work, even as officials say it is important for people to stay home unless they are essential, my colleagues Lisa Gartner and Jason Laughlin report. Wolf’s order closing all “non-life-sustaining” businesses allows hospitals to decide which employees have to report to work. (Here are the “life-sustaining businesses” allowed to stay open during the coronavirus pandemic.)

Employees in marketing, finance, and human resources at Friends Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia were told to use vacation days, apply for a leave of absence, or go unpaid if they wanted to stay home.

Belmont Behavioral Health Hospital on the Main Line is also requiring nonmedical employees to show up for work. The hospital fired a teacher who insisted on working with juvenile patients online from home.

Read more about workers being asked to show up for work.

» HELP US REPORT: Are you a health care worker, medical provider, government worker, patient, frontline worker or other expert? We want to hear from you.

🐶 Union carpenters created free custom doghouses for the Pennsylvania SPCA.

🏀 For Sixers GM Elton Brand, being a candidate for New York Knicks job is win-win.

👮‍♀️ The first female police chief in Atlantic County wants to open doors for other women.

When you finally do venture out of your home to grab groceries, consider the people behind the counter and restocking shelves, working through the pandemic so you can get food on your table.

My colleague Grace Dickinson gives tips on how to give thanks, including by shopping fast and efficiently, voicing your gratitude, writing a thank you note, paying it forward, staging a neighborhood round of applause, and delivering a treat. Read more advice here.

Have a social distancing tip or question to share? Let us know at health@inquirer.com and your input might be featured in a future edition of this newsletter.

Kahlil Gunther, a Woodstown High School choral-music teacher, who has played at Peter Shields Inn & Restaurant in Cape May for more than 20 years is adapting to virtual concerts.

From 6 to 7 p.m. for the last two Saturdays, the 47-year-old piano man has live streamed concerts on Facebook. He has played sets with songs from the Beatles, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Nirvana, my colleague Alfred Lubrano reports.

“When you live in a small town and are part of a church community,” Gunther said, “you feel as though you want to do things that aren’t just meaningful for yourself, but for other people. That’s why I decided on the concert series.”

Read more about Gunther here.

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