Delco has highest 14-day COVID-19 case rates in Southeastern Pa. | Morning Newsletter
Plus, a gym opened in South Jersey despite Gov. Murphy’s orders.
The Morning Newsletter
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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled a three-stage plan yesterday to reopen the state’s economy. Meanwhile, a South Jersey gym reopened against Murphy’s orders, prompting support from dozens of demonstrators. In Pennsylvania, 12 more counties will be allowed to start to reopen later this week, but Delaware County is reporting the highest rates of coronavirus cases in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
— Josh Rosenblat (@joshrosenblat, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
Atilis Gym in Bellmawr reopened yesterday morning, defying Gov. Phil Murphy’s coronavirus shutdown orders and drawing a crowd of supporters, and police officers issuing a warning and wishing them a good day. The gym’s owners were later issued a citation. Here’s what the crowd looked like.
“If you show up at that gym again tomorrow there’s going to be a different reality than showing today,” Murphy said at his daily news briefing. “These aren’t just words. We’ve got to enforce this. But I also don’t want to start World War III.”
Bill Bolds spent 25 years working narcotics in the Philadelphia Police Department. But in late March, he was fighting something that he never could have prepared for: COVID-19. In a bed that was too small for his six-foot-eight, 300-pound frame, Bolds was one of the first Philly cops to fall ill, one of the first coronavirus patients admitted to Penn’s hospital, and one of the first to go on a ventilator. By then, he was looking at a 20% chance of survival, my colleague Mike Newall reports.
After being in an induced coma for 20 days, Bolds woke up to a shutdown city, but one that his fellow officers still patrol. His story, Newall writes, is “a tale of the realities of policing in the time of the coronavirus — and a hopeful glimpse of the intersection of two front lines of the pandemic: the cops policing amid a deadly virus, and the doctors and nurses trying to keep them healthy.”
As 12 more counties prepare to this week enter the “yellow” stage of Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to lift coronavirus restrictions, Philadelphia and its surrounding counties are far from reaching the plan’s needed benchmark.
Delaware County has the highest 14-day per capita rate of residents with COVID-19 of counties in the Philadelphia region, according to state data. That figure has stayed pretty steady for about a month, while Philadelphia’s rate, for example, has dropped.
What you need to know today
Pennsylvania officials touted a new “robust universal testing strategy” for nursing homes. In reality, though, the strategy falls short of those claims.
Montgomery County sent out thousands of Pennsylvania absentee ballots — but with the wrong instructions.
Philadelphia election officials are putting 92,000 absentee ballot applications and fliers in food boxes given out across the city in an effort to reach low-income voters. Here are some photos of what that looks like.
New details, including a bloody carpet, have emerged in the shooting death of a Delco musician whose body was found in a Southwest Philly crypt.
In their first-ever virtual budget hearing, Philadelphia City Council members questioned Mayor Jim Kenney’s plan to raise taxes to offset the impact of the coronavirus.
A judge ruled that a lawsuit can proceed against Cosmo DiNardo’s parents in the 2017 slaying of four in Bucks County.
Through your eyes | #OurPhilly
If you could fly anywhere right now, where would you go? 🤔Thanks for sharing, @shutter.sean.
Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and we’ll pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout out!d
That’s interesting
🚪Restaurants are announcing that they’re closing — for good, my colleague Michael Klein reports.
😷Stop wearing your mask wrong.
🚧Residents are going to have a say in Washington Avenue’s future as city officials are planning a repaving and improvement project for next year.
🥕Here are some tips on how to organize your pandemic refrigerator to maximize both shelf life and money.
🎣New Jersey fishing charters and watercraft rentals reopened this weekend.
💰If you need to take money from your retirement fund, Vanguard advises taking loans instead of withdrawals.
Opinions
“The forgotten heroes of this time are those that find themselves thrust into positions of risk that they never saw coming. No amount of mental acrobatics could have led a bus driver or a grocery store clerk to foresee the role they are playing now. Yet they and many others find themselves now more essential to societal function than any other worker." — writes Hatem Abdallah, a medical student at Penn, about the COVID-19 heroes that aren’t health-care workers.
Philadelphia City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart writes about her plan to balance the city budget without raising taxes.
Philly’s overdose crisis still needs attention, the Inquirer Editorial Board writes.
What we’re reading
North Philly mail carrier Henrietta Dixon was highlighted in an Associated Press story focusing on post offices.
The leaders at three minority-owned companies in Philadelphia spoke with Philadelphia Business Journal about their experiences applying for federal PPP loans.
The Guardian reports that llamas could be a secret weapon against the coronavirus.
Your Daily Dose of | Graduation
This mother-and-daughter duo graduated from Penn together, both with the highest honors. And nothing about their journeys was traditional. They were part of Penn’s first-ever virtual commencement.