93-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news update with Kathy Romano.

And today is Wednesday. It's April 22nd. Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning. Reasons of Pennsylvania that have seen a relatively low number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus might be able to reopen in a fairly robust way on May 8th,

Governor Tom Wolfe said Tuesday. Wolf in a conference call with reporters said he intends to

loosen restrictions on people and businesses in much the same way that he imposed them over the

past month, gradually and county by county. More than half of all people who have tested positive for the virus statewide live in Philadelphia

and it's four suburban counties.

So we will not likely be that first phase.

Right.

Many rural counties, by contrast, have been minimally impacted.

Five counties have reported just one or two cases.

Wolf said the state has made

sufficient progress in its fight against the virus to begin gradually reopening some

businesses in early May, depending on the availability of widespread diagnostic testing and the

capacity of the health care system. His health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, said last week that

contact tracing, identifying people

who have been exposed to an infected person so that they can be quarantined will be really

important as Pennsylvania emerges from a pandemic that has killed more than 1,500 statewide.

But Wolf said the problem is there's no budget for that contact tracing.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health has started releasing zip code level information about cases of the novel coronavirus.

State officials published an interactive map on Monday that shows the number of confirmed cases of the new virus and the number of negative virus cases.

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