Two more deaths from coronavirus have occurred in the region, both elderly residents from a single Centre County nursing home, both of whom died at Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College, according to the Centre County coroner’s office.

A 96-year-old man died Friday and an 89-year-old woman died Saturday, according to a spokeswoman from the coroner’s office.

Both lived at the Oaks at Pleasant Gap nursing home, the coroner’s office spokeswoman said.

The office did not provide names for the deceased.

While the Centre County coroner’s office reported two deaths over the weekend, the state Department of Health reported just one additional death for Centre County — on Saturday.

There are sometimes delays in reports of deaths by the department, due to its receiving information directly in its version of the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) database, but indirectly through a database within the department used by coroners and through databases maintained by municipal health departments — with periodic “reconciliations” required, the DoH has said.

Besides the two deaths, the only statistical anomaly over the weekend for the six-county region was 62 additional coronavirus cases reported for Huntingdon County by the DoH Sunday, bringing that county’s total to 181 cases.

As recently as April 29, Huntingdon County’s case count was 29, in line with four of the other counties’ numbers. all in the teens or 20s — with Centre County then far ahead with 95 cases.

An outbreak at the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon accounts for most of the Huntingdon County cases since.

There have been 110 inmates and 36 employees in that facility infected, according to the state Department of Corrections website.

Centre County now has 119 cases.

Office of Advocacy

and Reform

The state’s Office of Advocacy and Reform, established in 2019 by an executive order of Gov. Tom Wolf, has set up a “think tank” comprising 25 experts charged with devising a plan to make Pennsylvania a “trauma-informed” state — an effort that will include helping heal the trauma created by COVID-19, according to an email from the governor’s office.

The think tank will complement Wolf’s anti-stigma campaign, Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters, which was formed to generate more resources for dealing with mental health issues, according to the news release.

To be completed in July, the think tank plan will set “guidelines, benchmarks and goals” to guide the work of state agencies, local governments and nonprofit organizations, according to the news release.

The task force members are from urban, suburban and rural areas and represent the fields of psychiatry, psychology, law enforcement, county government, clergy, social work, counseling, mindfulness, community development, education, sexual assault recovery, addiction recovery, domestic violence services, child maltreatment solutions, nursing, public health, pediatric medicine, prison re-entry and philanthropy, according to the news release.

“Our most vulnerable Pennsylvanians need us now more than ever,” said Dan Jurman, executive director of OAR in a recent teleconference.

Lots of people are trauma victims, said Jurman, 49, who experienced domestic violence as a child.

Traumatic experiences generate an excess of the fight, flight or freeze response and create an enduring reservoir of “toxic stress” so victims may start every day with a metaphorical glass half full of it — and are thus susceptible to an overflowing of stress from the addition of ordinary daily problems, according to Jurman.

When a child spills 10 cents worth of milk and it leads to a parent shouting, it’s not the milk, it’s the other things that have preceded it, Jurman said.

“We find ourselves being overwhelmed, burned out,” short-tempered, and “when we need to be our best selves,” our brains may begin to shut down, he said.

The work of OAR and the plan the think tank will develop aim to generate policies that will take account of the factors that aggravate toxic stress, including poverty, hunger, isolation and danger — especially for people at the margins and those at the early and late stages of life, according to Jurman.

There will be a review of laws, policies and procedures in systems that handle youths in group homes, foster care and independent living programs, with recommendations for systemic improvements, according to Nicole Yancy, OAR’s child advocate.

There will also be an assessment of quality-of-life issues in nursing and boarding homes, where the COVID-19 halt to visitation has created “enormous challenges,” according to Long-Term Care Ombudsman Margaret Barajas.

Political polarization makes efforts like those of OAR more difficult, but it will help to develop a “coalition of the willing,” through “compassionate, respectful conversation,” Jurman said.

Such efforts can “get upstream to the core cause” of problems, instead of treating only symptoms, he said.

Such preventive measures can ultimately have major benefits, including cost benefits, he said.

Help for those in need

Since COVID-19 began infecting Pennsylvanians in March, the Secretary of the Department of Human Services has repeatedly urged those who find themselves in need not to hesitate to ask for help.

“There should be no guilt or shame,” Teresa Miller said in a recent teleconference, reiterating what she had said in earlier teleconferences. “You don’t have to go through this alone.”

Historically, there has been a stigma attached to assistance programs, she said, noting that her department until six years ago was called the Department of Public Welfare.

The stigma is still there, she said.

“We live in a society that puts a lot of value on those who ‘pull themselves up by the bootstraps,'” she said. “(But) life isn’t always that easy.”

Programs administered by her department include Medical Assistance (Medicaid), the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a supplemental program called Pandemic EBT to provide food for students who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school; and a new emergency assistance grant program that provides a one-time payment for low-income families who lost wages due to the pandemic.

That emergency assistance program will use existing funds from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

It requires that recipient families include a child under 18 or a woman who is pregnant and at least one person in the household employed as of March 11 who subsequently lost 50 percent of their hours or wages for at least two weeks due to COVID-19, according to a DHS news release.

Application for all the assistance programs can be made through www.compass .state.pa.us.

The programs are “needed for the best of times and critical in the worst,” Miller said.

People can also contact their local food bank or pantry through Feeding Pennsylvania and Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, according to a governor’s office news release.

Saturday/Sunday numbers

New/total county cases: Blair 0; 0 / 28; 28; Bedford 1; 0 / 29; 29 (1 death); Cambria 2; 2 / 42; 44 (1 death); Centre 0; 2 / 117; 119 (3 deaths [plus 1 reported by coroner]); Clearfield 0; 1 / 24; 25; Huntingdon 2; 62 / 119; 181; area new/total cases: 5; 67 / 359; 426

New/total cases statewide: 1,078; 1,295 (down 18 percent; up 20 percent ) / 55,316; 56,611

New/total deaths statewide: 72; 19 / 3,688; 3,707, 6.5 percent of positive cases (as of Sunday)

New/total negative tests in area counties: 246; 223 / 5,786; 6,009

New/total tests in area (new positives plus new negatives): 251/ 290; 6,145/6,435; 1.2 percent of population in Blair;

1 percent of population in area (as of Sunday)

New/total negative tests statewide: 251; 290 / 6,145; 6,435

New/total tests statewide: 6,548; 7,276 / 277,107; 284,383; 2.2 percent of population (as of Sunday)

Infection rate (percent of population with confirmed positives) region / state: 0.07 percent / 0.44 percent (as of Sunday)