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Although he voiced strong support for the idea of paid sick leave, Fitzgerald said that legally the county’s board of health – not county council – is responsible for developing such health-related policies.
“This issue is too important to our community, and particularly to those workers who would have protection in the form of paid sick leave, for it to be done the wrong way,” the Democrat wrote in a letter to council.
“It’s simply not fair to give employees in our county false hope that they’re protected when the process followed by council jeopardizes that,” the letter said. “If we want to protect our residents, families, community and public health, we must do this in the right way to ensure that it withstands any legal challenge.”
It’s not likely covid-19 will be completely eradicated, at least not any time soon.
That would be the best case scenario, said Dr. Graham Snyder, medical director of Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiology at UPMC.
The worst case would be that the virus continually evolves to become more deadly and requires more vaccine development every year.
But more likely, experts say, the pandemic’s end will fall somewhere in the middle, where cases of covid-19 still occur, but they are less deadly and less frequent.
“There’s a high probability it turns into an endemic virus like seasonal influenza,” said Dr. Thomas Walsh, an infectious disease expert at the Allegheny Health Network. “It may well be that we need booster vaccines at certain intervals, yearly or every several years.”
Pittsburgh Public Safety officials on Thursday urged caution in weekend St. Patrick’s Day parties as warm weather moves in and the covid-19 vaccines offer a hope that gatherings and celebrations could return soon along with a sense of normalcy. “Now is not the time to let down our guard,” Public
Allegheny County on Thursday reported two additional coronavirus deaths and 276 additional coronavirus cases. The number of the deaths in Allegheny County because of covid-19 stands at 1,688. The health department said that the dates of death ranged from Dec. 7 to Tuesday and that one person was in their
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