How Philly's shutdown saved thousands of lives, according to Drexel researchers

May 13--TL;DR: A Drexel University team of public health researchers estimated that the first 45 days of Philadelphia's shutdown, which began March 23, avoided about 57,000 hospitalizations and saved 6,200 lives. Here is how Pennsylvania decides when counties can reopen. Pennsylvania health officials announced today that they would require mass testing of tens of thousands of nursing home staff and residents.

-- Ellie Silverman (@esilverman11, [email protected])

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Pennsylvania health officials said Tuesday they would require mass testing of tens of thousands of nursing home staff and residents. This announcement comes after Pennsylvania long-term care facilities have been struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus. More than two-thirds of the more than 3,800 Pennsylvanians who have died of the coronavirus were residents of nursing or personal-care homes. "This effort will give us a clearer picture of the extent of outbreaks in nursing homes and a head-start at stopping them," Secretary of Health Rachel Levine said. Read more here about Pennsylvania's plan.

A Drexel University team of public health researchers used an interactive model developed by the New York Times to estimate how many hospitalizations and deaths were prevented in 30 big cities, including Philadelphia. The researchers estimated the first 45 days of the city's shutdown, which began March 23, prevented about 57,000 hospitalizations and 6,200 deaths. Staying home until May 22 would prevent 68,000 hospitalizations and 7,100 deaths. Read more here about what the researchers found.

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Even though Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf extended this region's stay-at-home order until June 4, people are increasingly traveling further from home. They're going against local guidelines and scheduling hangouts, sometimes maintaining six feet of distance from one another, and other times not. But experts warn you shouldn't do that. Here's why.

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Have a social distancing tip or question to share? Let us know at [email protected] and your input might be featured in a future edition of this newsletter.

-- Public schools are struggling to adjust to remote learning, while some private schools have "online luxury learning," the New York Times reports. This is widening the education gap across the county.

-- Twitter will allow employees to work from home "forever," BuzzFeed reports.

-- More than half of Americans say the U.S. government is doing a poor job preventing the spread of the coronavirus, according to a new poll from CNN.

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