Breaking News

COVID-19

State’s COVID-19 cases show signs of slowing

HARRISBURG — Christmas has come and gone, and while we won’t know for at least a week or two if Pennsylvanians heeded government warnings about the COVID-19 risks of large and small gathering during the holiday, the state’s virus-related numbers vastly improved through this past week and weekend. For the week of Dec. 18 through Dec. 24, the state Health Department’s COVID-19 Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard, updated Friday afternoon, showed the seven-day total of new cases was 10,321 fewer than the prior seven-day period of Dec. 11 through Dec. 17, which reported 4,371 ...

Sounds of silence

For many, New Year’s Eve means listening to live music until the clock strikes midnight, but such frivolity will be missing this year because of restrictions placed on restaurants and bars due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bob Watters, drummer for the popular local band Felix and the ...

US public school rolls drop amid pandemic

By Kalyn Belsha and Gabrielle LaMarr Chalkbeat By Leah Willingham and Larry Fenn The Associated Press Fearful of sending her two children back to school as the coronavirus pandemic raged in Mississippi, Angela Atkins decided to give virtual learning a chance this fall. Almost ...

Claysburg woman finds peace in sharing expanded Nativity scene

During this year of pandemic and disruption, many people have written about the forced isolation and uncertainty, and about their longing for deliverance. Instead of writing about the loneliness, lack of community and confusion, Sandy Allison of Claysburg vastly enlarged her annual creche in ...

Challenge to indoor dining ban rejected

HARRISBURG — A federal judge in Pennsylvania has rejected a bid to block one of Gov. Tom Wolf’s latest orders to try to stem the spread of the coronavirus, a three-week shutdown of indoor dining at restaurants through Jan. 4, as Wolf went to court to sue restaurants defying the order. The action in court came Wednesday, as a growing number of restaurants defy Wolf’s shutdown order, and being cited or ordered closed for it. The state Department of Agriculture ordered 40 restaurants to close last week for violating pandemic-related orders, while Wolf’s Department of Health ...

New tool launched to trace cases

In order to get better cooperation from people who test positive for the coronavirus, and in order to save time for their overwhelmed case investigators, the state Department of Health this week introduced an online form that can take the place of a phone conversation. The department has only managed to complete a low percentage of case investigations — 9%, for example, for the week ending Dec. 12 — a success rate that reflects frequent unwillingness of people to answer investigators’ calls and a workload that has forced investigators to pursue only high risk cases, officials ...