On Tuesday, when for the first time since March 22, there were no new coronavirus cases listed on the state Department of Health website for the six local counties, an analysis showed those local counties have a vastly lower incidence of COVID-19 per capita than counties in the northeast and southeast.

Blair and contiguous counties, with 120 total positives, have 20 cases per 100,000 people.

Blair has nine, Bedford and Cambria 10, Clearfield 11, Huntingdon 24 and Centre — with 70 total cases — has 43 per 100,000 people.

Lehigh County has 480 cases per 100,000, while Philadelphia has 449 and Montgomery County 280.

The state as a whole has 190 cases per 100,000.

Lehigh’s case rate is 53 times larger than Blair’s.

The state’s mitigation policies, including closure of non-essential businesses and schools and a stay-home order, may be why some areas are seeing a low incidence of infection, said Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday during a press call, after a Somerset County reporter asked why the restrictions should apply all over.

“I recognize that no one size fits all,” Wolf said. “But there was a point when nobody was sick in Philadelphia, either.”

The state is trying to keep the crisis away from those areas that aren’t in crisis, he said.

“We’ve got to avoid becoming complacent, (avoid thinking) it’s not going to affect me, my family, my neighborhood, my county,” Wolf said. “We’ve got to respect the disease.”

Overall, Pennsylvania is in “good shape,” Wolf said.

“We have been able to flatten the curve,” said state Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine during her department’s daily webcast, observing that Tuesday’s statewide new-case count of 1,146 is well below last Thursday’s 1,989.

It’s actually lower than any day since April 1.

“We’re not seeing the flare-ups and the outbreaks,” Levine said.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency model predicted that without the ongoing mitigation efforts, the current cumulative 25,000 state cases would be more like 60,000, she said.

There has been ongoing discussion about when to begin reopening businesses, and before that happens, the state would like to have additional testing capacity — both for infections and for antibodies that indicate past infection and current immunity, Levine said.

But extensive additional capacity probably won’t be available in time, because there aren’t enough chemicals and reagents available to expand the viral testing to the level of “population surveillance” and because antibody tests won’t even be available anywhere for another week or so, Levine said.

Regardless, the reopening will need to be done cautiously, region-by-region, maybe county-by-county, even municipality-by-municipality, Levine said.

It will proceed day-by-day and week-by-week “in slow, progressive fashion,” she said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.