After meeting with Trump, Murphy says N.J. is ‘on our way’ to doubling testing; Pa. officials prepare to release more on reopening Friday

New Jersey was preparing to receive more coronavirus testing supplies and personal protective equipment after Gov. Phil Murphy met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, and Pennsylvania’s top health official said the commonwealth’s testing capacity was also expanding somewhat as officials prepare for the phased reopening of some counties.

Murphy told Trump at the Thursday morning meeting that he expected New Jersey could double or more than double its testing capabilities — a benchmark set by the governor for the state to begin reopening — by the end of May thanks to federal assistance.

“We are on our way” to meeting that crucial requirement, Murphy said later Thursday.

New Jersey reported more coronavirus-related deaths than New York state on Thursday, bringing the state’s death toll to 7,228 with the addition of 406 fatalities. Officials also reported 2,633 new positive cases for a total of 118,652. Next week, the state will begin to test all inmates and officers at the state’s correctional facilities for the virus, and all NJ Transit employees will also be able to be tested, Murphy said.

In Pennsylvania, the death toll reached 2,292, and officials announced 1,397 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 45,763. Philadelphia announced relatively high death and case numbers Thursday but said the data included old cases that were only recently identified as Philadelphia residents. In total, 607 Philadelphians have died of the virus — 340 of them in nursing homes — and 14,468 have tested positive, Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said.

“Now it looks like we’re on the down slope, and all of us, particularly me, want the daily numbers to fall faster than they are,” Farley said.

Pennsylvania officials were preparing to announce Friday which areas of the state can move into the first phase of reopening on May 8 — likely the more rural areas of the state that have met various quantitative and qualitative benchmarks that indicate the spread of the virus has become low enough.

“It’s going to be an experiment for all of us,” Gov. Tom Wolf said. “How do we live and interact in this new world?”

» READ MORE: Masks, staggered schedules, social distancing: When Pa. students return to school, things will look different

Though officials have predicted Southeastern Pennsylvania will be among the last regions to reopen, residents statewide will get a taste of that new normal Friday when golf courses, marinas, and private campgrounds reopen across the commonwealth. Wolf said Thursday he expected customers, employees, and business owners to self-enforce social distancing and other public health guidelines.

And as businesses across the state remain shuttered, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he would inspect how the state handled the more than 40,000 waiver applications for businesses that wanted to remain open during the coronavirus shutdown.

Senate Republicans requested the audit this week. DePasquale, a Democrat, said he’d heard from many businesses that found the waiver process “cumbersome,” unfair, and not transparent.

Wolf said he welcomed the oversight and said the state tried to do the right thing but could have made mistakes as it navigated an unprecedented situation. A little more than a third of waivers, which represented 1% of all state businesses, were rejected, he said.

“If we find a glaring problem now, we’re going to make [the governor] and his team aware of it immediately so we can try to rectify something,” DePasquale said. “Hopefully there won’t be another pandemic, but you never know.”

In Philadelphia, businesses that violate the city’s stay-at-home orders can now be fined up to $2,000 and residents in violation may pay up to $500, officials said Thursday, increasing the $300 maximum fine amount.

Since the orders to shut down all non-essential private businesses and stay home, the city has not issued any fines for violations but has issued 583 warnings. Police officers have issued 25 “failure to disperse” code violation notices to people flouting the directive to stay home, Managing Director Brian Abernathy said.

And even when the city begins to reopen, Philadelphia will not operate city pools this summer, officials announced. The decision was based on the expense of opening pools, the difficulty of hiring seasonal employees quickly, and public health concerns, said Jim Engler, Kenney’s chief of staff.

“We’re not certain yet that with the additional social distancing that we’ve had to put in place that it would be safe to operate pools this summer,” Engler said during a briefing on the city’s revised budget for the next fiscal year, at which officials also said the city would have to lay off hundreds of municipal workers.

City hospitals had 964 coronavirus patients on Thursday, with the continuing capacity to deal with the pandemic, Farley said.

Health-care workers and first responders statewide have received more than 4 million N95 masks, 1.3 million surgical masks, 1.3 million pairs of gloves, 240,000 hospital gowns, and nearly 80,000 face shields from the state since the beginning of the outbreak, Health Secretary Rachel Levine said.

» READ MORE: Pa. and N.J. golf courses are reopening this weekend: What you need to know before you play

Officials sent 1,378 shipments of such protective equipment to long-term care homes in April, she said, including a “large push” of N95 masks this week.

New Jersey was set to receive such supplies from the federal government after Murphy’s meeting with Trump: the Garden State will get 550,000 new test kits and 750,000 new swabs for the tests, and hundreds of nursing homes will also directly receive a shipment of personal protective equipment, including 220,000 masks, 19,000 goggles, and 200,000 gowns, the governor said Thursday afternoon.

“This proves it is possible to put people over politics,” he said.

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Though overall the curve of infection is slowing in New Jersey, several South Jersey counties have seen their case numbers double in the last two weeks. On Thursday, state and local officials said the spike happened after 16 long-term-care homes in South Jersey were tested.

In Atlantic County, more than half of the new confirmed cases in recent weeks came from long-term care facilities, such as a Hammonton health-care center that reported 10 deaths and 147 cases over one week.

But the virus has not appeared to spread as widely in the community, and the rate of positive test results from the county-run testing site in the last three weeks was 27%, well below the state average of 42%, said county spokesperson Linda Gilmore.

“Overall, the positivity rate in the south has been stable,” said Edward Lifshitz, one of the state’s medical directors.

Murphy once again pressed Trump on the need for federal aid, saying New Jersey will need significant assistance to keep firefighters, police, and EMS workers on the state payroll.

Trump said the idea of providing direct assistance to states, something some Republicans have voiced opposition to, was a “tough question.” But the president did tell reporters Murphy was a strong advocate for the idea, and he praised Murphy as a “wonderful man” who was running the state “with heart and with brains.”

“We’re working very hard with New Jersey,” Trump said.

Staff writers Sean Collins Walsh, Rob Tornoe, Allison Steele, and Laura McCrystal contributed to this article.