Saturday, April 25th 2020

Blair County, Pa. (WJAC) —

Part of Governor Tom Wolf’s plan to reopen Pennsylvania includes breaking the state into regions to determine when it is best to begin easing restrictions. But not all law makers are I favor of this system.

Many Pennsylvanians have seen the state Department of Health’s map splitting the state into six health regions. State representative, Jim Gregory is speaking out as to why he’s calling on Governor Wolf to not use these regions are a guide to reopening areas.

State House representative for the 80th district, Jim Gregory is calling on Governor Wolf and the Department of Health to reopen the state by counties instead of regions.

“Well because you have anomalies. You have areas like ours where we should be getting people back to work,” said Gregory.

Gregory wrote a letter to Governor Wolf citing several reasons as to why opening county by county would be more effective, especially for areas like Blair County where case numbers are significantly lower than other counties grouped with the Southcentral region.

“The numbers tell me that in the zip codes that make up the 80th district we have no more than half a dozen cases in all of the 80th district. Our community is spread out. Our businesses and our communities are already spread out.” “We want them out of consideration for Blair County to open. Meanwhile, York, Dauphin, Lebanon would love Blair county and the 80th district to stay in there because our numbers help bring them down more quickly,” said Gregory.

Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine says these regions are just one of the many ways the state will determine when it is time to ease restrictions.

“Well the regions we are going to be talking about are basically our health regions and we have had them for years now and that’s how we will be considering the regions and different metrics along with other factors that will determine which regions will go from red to yellow on may 8th,” said Dr. Levine.

She says other factors the state will look at is testing availability and hospital space.

But Gregory is encouraging other representatives to join him in calling on Governor Wolf to change the reopening procedures from looking at regions to deciding on a county by county basis.

Continue…

https://wjactv.com/news/local/local-state-representative-speaks-out-against-governors-decision-to-reopen-by-region