Gov. Tom Wolf has announced a stay-at-home order for the counties hardest hit by coronavirus, including Monroe, and extended the statewide school shutdown for at least two more weeks.

Cases of coronavirus in Pennsylvania have been doubling every two days - 644 total as of Monday - and there have been six deaths. The first Monroe County death was reported on Monday.

The breakdown of cases locally is Lehigh, 25; Monroe, 43; Northampton, 23, with two deaths; and Schuylkill, 3. Carbon has no reported cases as of Monday.

Numbers are updated daily by the Pennsylvania Department of Health at noon.

Buying time

Wolf says the stay-at-home order is furthering the effort to prevent the virus from spreading at a rate that would overtake the capacity of the state’s health care system.

“This is something that will help us to buy time to allow our health care system to build the capacity they need to deal with this epidemic,” Wolf said during an online press conference Monday afternoon.

The order took effect Monday night in Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Monroe and Montgomery counties. They are joining Philadelphia, which announced its own shelter in place order over the weekend.

Under the order, people in the affected counties may only leave the house if it is for specific reasons. There is a list of about a dozen exceptions including leaving for groceries and medical supplies, to travel to work at a life-sustaining business, and to travel to care for a vulnerable person. The full list is available at governor.pa.gov.

Wolf said it’s important for residents in the affected counties to be able to obtain food and prescriptions, but they should weigh the potential risk of such a trip.

Wolf said he chose the counties where there is evidence of an outbreak of the virus rather than a statewide stay-at-home order because he wanted to act decisively, but not overreact in response to the COVID-19 virus.

Preventing cases

Wolf acknowledged the financial toll that mitigation has taken on the state, but said that it would result in preventing further damage to the state’s economy and its residents.

“If we’re successful on this, we won’t have to spread this to the rest of the state,” Wolf said.

Wolf and Secretary of Health Rachel Levine repeatedly used the term “bend the curve” during Monday’s update to discuss the state’s overall strategy for coronavirus.

They said that the social distancing efforts put in place over the past week - closing schools and first nonessential, then non-life-sustaining businesses - are providing the state with additional time to prepare hospitals for a surge of patients who may be seriously ill with the virus.

“I think there is every reason to think that the social distancing will greatly help us in terms of preventing the spread, and preventing the surge from overwhelming us,” Levine said.

Wolf said he is most concerned that the virus will spread at such a rate that the state’s hospitals and health systems won’t have the capacity to treat everyone who is seriously ill.

He used Italy as an example of a nation whose health care system was overwhelmed when the virus spread rapidly.

“We need to bend this, we need to buy time,” Wolf said.

Preparing for surge

While the mitigation efforts are the most publicly visible part of the state’s strategy to combat coronavirus, state health officials are also working to help hospitals prepare for the surge of patients.

Levine said the state is working with hospitals and health systems to inventory available supplies such as N95 masks, and track how much they are being used to avoid a shortage.

She said there are more than 2,000 ventilators across the state, and the Department of Health is tracking their usage as well.

Levine said there are currently 3,400 ICU beds in Pennsylvania, and on a given day about 40 percent would be available for coronavirus patients.

The Department of Health is also tracking the availability of all types of hospital beds, not just ICU. They are looking at repurposing ambulatory surgery centers while elective surgeries are on hold, and even hotel rooms for patients who would be in long-term recovery.

“Our goal is to provide resilience in that system and make sure that we have the resources available to equip the hospitals with the resources we need to deal with the surge that we are trying to prevent, but could happen over the next number of weeks,” Levine said.