1/ The spread of the coronavirus in PA seems to be slowing after a recent spike in cases. Let's take a look at how the data has changed in the past week or so bit.ly/2XDJbiV
2/ 7-day and 14-day average cases in the state were steadily dropping through May and most of June after an exponential climb that began in March. July was a setback, however, as cases gradually increased. 
3/ Average cases rose from between 500 and 600 cases to just under approximately 1,000 cases until about July 27. bit.ly/30KpXcc
4/ As of Thursday, state data showed those averages declining over the last week and a half. While a downward trend is a good thing, the state essentially lost a little over a month's progress in slowing cases.
5/ Every county in southeastern PA saw some increase since the spike began forming on June 19 statewide, when the 7-day average of new cases per 100,000 people ranged between 2 and 4 cases for most counties.
6/ Allegheny County was hit probably harder than anywhere else once cases began rising. The county's average 7-day rate in June was less than 1 new case per 100,000 people, topping out at 16.8 cases on July 17.
7/ Allegheny County's current average case rate isn't the highest, but it is in the top 10. Delaware County is the only southeastern county to make that list. Union County is highest with 22.5 cases per 100,000 residents
8/ State officials appear to be trying to keep reopening moving forward by adjusting guidelines and recommendations. Wolf recently recommended against allowing sports until Jan. 1, though it was called a "strong recommendation" and not a mandate
9/ Here's our story on the sports recommendation: bit.ly/31tJqOW Why am I not delving into the sports issue now? Last night my roommate was watching a baseball game last night my first thought was "world series started." Moving on…
10/ While @GovernorTomWolf has said before the three-phased reopening plan was not a one-way street, moving counties back to yellow or red doesn't seem to be a consideration right now bit.ly/3cDau22
11/ But @PennPIRG sent a letter to Wolf's office this past week urging the state to do just that, backed by a list of medical professionals agreeing the state needs to reset and restart its reopening plan and its list of health care professionals
12/ The state chapter of the national research group is part of a larger campaign to convince states seeing spikes in new cases to wait until they have the testing, hospital capacity and other facets of an effective pandemic response in place. bit.ly/33Hw8kr
13/ When PA was first implementing its plan, health officials used a series of metrics to decide when counties would move from red to yellow. One requirement was a county needed fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 people in a two week period.
14/ Before I go any further, I want to note that the "yellow metric" had its share of confusion months ago. It's one of multiple benchmarks and it isn't clear what role, if any, it played in moving to green. bit.ly/3eTc3dY
15/ Applying the yellow metric to new cases since March, about half the state would still be in the red. Again, this doesn't consider hospital capacity, testing, contact tracing ability and so many other things.
16/ So, that's about where we're at right now with new cases. Cases are trending down again, but we lost some time. As always, data was pulled through the @JohnsHopkins github repo and analysis and charts were done using @Python_Pandas and @matplotlib. Maps done with @geopandas
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