COVID-19 case counts continue to soar throughout the state.

But after a news conference Monday where both Department of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine and Acting Secretary of Education Noe Ortega spoke, it doesn’t seem like any further changes or mitigation are on the horizon.

Levine said as of Monday, 4,405 Pennsylvanians are hospitalized due to COVID-19; 914 of them are in the ICU and 465 are on a ventilator. There were over 500 deaths last week and Levine reported 32 more on Monday.

“We’re going to be watching this data very closely,” said Levine. “We watch all of the data, but particularly the hospitalization data and the intensive care unit data, and we compare this to the different models that exist.

“We have no plans for further mitigation. We had instituted mitigation over the last two weeks and we will be observing the impact of that. But it’s hard for me to predict the future in terms of what will be necessary later.”

The department confirmed Monday there were 4,268 new COVID-19 cases, in addition to 5,529 new cases reported Sunday, for a two-day total of 9,797 additional positive cases.

Levine said the statewide positivity rate is nearly 12 percent. The only county below 5 percent is Forest County. Despite the historic numbers, school districts remain in local control of their instructional models.

“With regards to our recommendations, I just want to be very clear, as you think what the department had put out as a resource to help school leaders make decisions about what type of learning model they should put in place,” Ortega said. “All of these are contingent on the local levels of transmission. By that, I want to emphasize the fact that what we put out so far, applied primarily to counties that are in the substantial level of transmission, which is the highest of our three categories.

“Within that level of transmission, we do recommend that schools consider moving to remote learning; in fact, that’s what we’re asking them to do at the moment.

For those institutions, because I want to make sure that we honor the local control decision, that choose not to move to a remote-learning option, then the important aspect here is that they agree to double-down through this attestation form to adhere to the mitigation strategies that relates to face covering. And on top of that, to make sure they monitor local levels of transmission that happen at their schools.”

Levine said 28,000 cases have been reported among children 5-18 years of age. However, there are currently no plans to make a future hypothetical vaccination mandatory for students to return to school in person.

“We have no plans to make the COVID-19 vaccine required for anyone, including school children. In fact, there have not been adequate studies done to date with the vaccines on children under 18 years of age. Some of the companies are starting those trials now. We’ll wait and see what science tells us in terms of the vaccine in young people. We expect it to be safe and effective, but we’re going to have to prove that.

“We do not plan at this time to immunize children through the schools,” said Levine. “We’d be working more through the health care system. Including when the time comes, when children are indicated to receive the vaccines through their health care personnel, pediatricians, family physicians and perhaps pharmacies. We’re still working out that plan, but again, vaccines aren’t licensed for children.”