Improving transportation and land use planning in Pittsburgh
The New York Times is reporting that numerous small United States manufacturers of N95 masks are unable to find buyers for all of their masks. Major American retailers are not selling N95 masks to the general public because the CDC still requests that the public not use N95 masks to save supplies for healthcare workers.
From April until the first week of December, I had been plotting the positivity rate for COVID-19 tests on my blog. These numbers were calculated from the regular updates provided by the Pennsylvania state and Allegheny County numbers on the number of tests and the number of positive test results. Through the Spring and Summer
The surge in COVID-19 testing has resulted in delayed processing of COVID-19 tests around the country. The youtube channel Wendover Productions recently released an excellent video on the logistics of COVID-19 testing that describes why it is challenging to process tests quickly. The delay in test results is impacting Allegheny County as well. In a
This is my third post on the press conference Rich Fitzgerald and Dr. Bogen gave on July 7, 2020. The first can be found here, and the second here. When Dr. Bogen was asked about closures other than restaurants and bars, she stated that there are no other activities associated with people who have tested
This is my second post on the press conference Rich Fitzgerald and Dr. Bogen gave on July 7, 2020. The first can be found here, in which I talked about staffing challenges to Allegheny County's contact tracing program. Inadequate staffing may not be the biggest challenge for Allegheny County's contact tracing program. Time is essential
Rich Fitzgerald and Dr. Bogen gave a press conference on July 7, 2020. I had thoughts on three topics that were discussed, so this is blog post part 1. While Progress is Being Made, More Contact Tracers are Still Needed Dr. Bogen stated that the Medical Reserve Corp of Allegheny County is being used to
Allegheny County can improve its response to the recent rise in COVID-19 cases. However, before I identify improvements, let me say that Allegheny County has responded better to its recent rise in cases than any other county in Southwestern Pennsylvania. A week ago I wrote that Allegheny County should close bars and restaurants, the state
Allegheny County reported a record of 90 new cases of COVID-19 today (June 27, 2020). This is not a one day anomaly, but part of a clear trend of rising case numbers. There is about a two week delay on average between a new infection and a publicly reported case number (see chart 7A here),
There has been a concerning rise in COVID-19 cases in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties in the past week. Westmoreland county has had more new cases per capita over the last 14 days than Allegheny, and their case numbers are growing more rapidly. Allegheny Health Department Directory Debra Bogen gave a press conference about it today.
Governor Wolf has recently issued a plan for reopening the state, improving testing, and performing contact tracing. His plan could use improvement. Tomas Pueyo published an excellent article on how to do testing and contact tracing. The article is based on international best practices and a scientific understanding of how COVID-19 spreads. A large part