In a week that saw Pennsylvania officials deal with backlash over COVID-19 related deaths, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine maintained Saturday that the process of resolving the matter is ongoing.

“I know that there were concerns in terms of reconciling our different data systems, so we pulled back the “probable deaths” and for the foreseeable future the deaths that I report will be confirmed deaths,” she said.

“We had an in-depth discussion with our team, in terms of working with the coroners today; we are going to be reaching out to the coroners association and the president and executive director to have a meeting next week. We want to make sure that we do everything we can to work collaboratively with the coroners association.”

On Tuesday, an additional 360 deaths related to coronavirus were announced as officials began to classify “probable” virus deaths as well as confirmed deaths.

That brought the total number of deaths from coronavirus in Pennsylvania to 1,564.

The number changed days later when the death toll dropped by 201 when probable deaths previously included in the count had been deducted.

“Sometimes, there are challenges in terms of the data, especially with so many cases and so many deaths,” said Levine. “The one thing we did push out was this idea of presumed, probable death. And then we had problems reconciling it, so we came out and said that and now we’re just doing the confirmed deaths. We’ve been as open as possible in these briefings, and on the website.”

In data released Sunday, there were 1,116 additional positive cases of COVID-19, bringing the statewide total to 41,165.

The state reported 1,550 deaths in Pennsylvania.

Carbon County remained the lowest in the Times News region, with 162 cases. There were 12 deaths reported.

In looking at the numbers by ZIP code, the highest numbers were in Albrightsville, with 43 positive cases. Weatherly accounted for 40 such instances, the most in the county.

Beaver Meadows and Tresckow, which border Weatherly, had 16 and nine positive cases, respectively. Nearby Hazleton had 906 positive cases.

Lehigh County had 2,551 cases with 50 deaths reported.

In Monroe County, there were 1,054 cases with 44 deaths, while Northampton County had 1,780 cases, and 49 deaths.

Schuylkill County had 311 cases, with five deaths. Tamaqua had 30 cases, as of midnight Saturday.

Levine agreed with the notion that significantly more residents have had the virus than have been tested for it, indicating that the virus is more widespread, and perhaps less deadly than originally thought.

“I know there’s a study using antibody testing in New York,” she said. “Those studies need to be repeated, and have further studies to judge their impact. But I have said before, we know that there are more cases of COVID-19 than we have been able to detect. We know that some patients with COVID-19 have no symptoms. We know that some patients have very mild symptoms and haven’t gotten tested. We don’t know exactly how many they are.

“I think that that’s going to be very important in our surveillance in the future when we are able to do that - either virus testing or the antibody testing in the future. But it is clear that there are many more people in Pennsylvania and in any state that have had COVID-19 than we exactly know of at this time.”

As the method of data collection continues to evolve, so too will the true death rate caused by the coronavirus.

“And that does influence the death rate. Our death rate right now is almost 4 in terms of the number per 100 that have passed away,” said Levine. “We know that that is not exactly true. Data from China indicated approximately two out of 100; other areas may be down closer to 1 out of 100. So as we get more surveillance data, we’ll be able to know that number.

“I do want to point out, however, that the death rate of the flu is 0.1. So even if it’s approximately one out of 100 or a little more, that’s still 10 times the death rate it is for influenza.”