N.J. coronavirus cases spike to 8,825 with 108 deaths. Officials announce 1,982 new positive tests, another 24-hour surge.

Murphy pumping $140M to health care industry for COVID-19 efforts

Medical staff in protective gear administer a test for COVID-19 at a drive-through coronavirus testing center in Paramus on Friday, March 20.AP

By Brent Johnson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

State officials Friday announced nearly 2,000 new cases of the coronavirus and 27 new deaths in New Jersey, boosting the statewide total to at least 8,825 known cases — including at least 108 deaths — as the state continues its efforts to slow the spread of the fast-moving virus.

“We mourn with these families and indeed with our entire state every precious life that has been lost,” Gov. Phil Murphy said at the Trenton War Memorial during his daily coronavirus media briefing. “We can’t bring them back. That is as stark a reality as we have to face.”

New Jersey, which has about 9 million residents, ranks second in the United States in total coronavirus cases, after the neighboring state of New York.

Officials say they expect the number of positive cases to keep rising as testing expands in New Jersey. They say the peak of infections may be three weeks away, but the actual number of cases is likely even higher than the numbers announced Friday, because there’s been a testing lag as long as seven days.

That’s before Murphy issued his most dramatic social-distancing restrictions on residents, including ordering them to stay at home and ordering non-essential businesses closed.

At Friday’s coronavirus briefing, the governor lashed out at people who are getting tested without showing symptoms.

Murphy said it is “useless” and “unnecessary” to test people who are asymptomatic, saying it would “not provide us with the critical data we need to get out in front and stay out in front. We need to know we’re testing the right people and not wasting tests.”

New Jersey’s state laboratory has run 28,043 coronavirus tests since the outbreak started, with 8,296 positive tests — a positive rate of 33.4%, said state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli.

Persichilli said she may have numbers by Monday on how many New Jerseyans with the virus have recovered.

“You have to make an assumption that absent the deaths, everyone else is recovering or on the road to recovery,” she said. She noted that 1,080 residents who have tested positive were hospitalized as of late this week, though many more cases are under investigation.

The latest county-by-county breakdown of cases, according to the state tracking website, shows:

  • Bergen County: 1,505 positive cases
  • Essex County: 826 positive cases
  • Middlesex County: 640 positive cases
  • Monmouth County: 634 positive cases
  • Hudson County: 594 positive cases
  • Union County: 519 positive cases
  • Passaic County: 484 positive cases
  • Morris County: 391 positive cases
  • Somerset County: 222 positive cases
  • Mercer County: 131 positive cases
  • Camden County: 95 positive cases
  • Burlington County: 88 positive cases
  • Sussex County: 65 positive cases
  • Hunterdon County: 52 positive cases
  • Gloucester County: 40 positive cases
  • Warren County: 38 positive cases
  • Atlantic County: 14 positive cases
  • Cumberland County: 9 positive cases
  • Cape May County: 7 positive cases
  • Salem County: 3 positive cases

Officials also announced Friday that the state-run testing sites at Bergen Community College in Paramus and PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel will go to a new schedule starting Saturday.

On Saturday, both sites will only test health-care workers and first-responders. After that, the sites will run on alternating days for people across the state showing symptoms.

On Sunday, only the Paramus center will be open. On Monday, only the Holmdel center will be open. They each will administer 500 tests a day.

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Murphy pumping $140M to health care industry to ramp up COVID-19 efforts

By Daniel J. Munoz, NJBIZ
March 27, 2020 2:39 pm

Gov. Phil Murphy said he’ll pump $140 million into the state’s health care industry in a bid to help ramp up its ability to conduct COVID-19 testing and help treat a potential surge of patients.

“We must ensure their viability to meet the challenge,” Murphy said at daily press conference on the outbreak in Trenton on Friday.

This comes as the total count of positive diagnosis for COVID-19 in New Jersey reaches 8,825, with a death toll of 108 people.

Hospitals and health care providers have become dangerously low on N95 masks, beds, facemasks and most importantly, ventilators.

Businesses and all non-hospital health care facilities are being ordered by Murphy to hand over a list of any such equipment they possess.

The COVID-19 testing centers at Bergen Community College in Paramus and at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel – run by the state government and Federal Emergency Management Agency – have frequently reached capacity less than an hour after opening.

Murphy said Thursday he would expand BCC’s daily test capacity from 350 a day to 500 a day.

In response to a widely anticipated patient surge, the Murphy administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are bringing two decommissioned hospitals back online, one in Woodbury and another in Plainfield.By: Daniel J. Munoz
March 27, 2020 2:39 pm

Gov. Phil Murphy said he’ll pump $140 million into the state’s health care industry in a bid to help ramp up its ability to conduct COVID-19 testing and help treat a potential surge of patients.

“We must ensure their viability to meet the challenge,” Murphy said at daily press conference on the outbreak in Trenton on Friday.

This comes as the total count of positive diagnosis for COVID-19 in New Jersey reaches 8,825, with a death toll of 108 people.

Hospitals and health care providers have become dangerously low on N95 masks, beds, facemasks and most importantly, ventilators.

Businesses and all non-hospital health care facilities are being ordered by Murphy to hand over a list of any such equipment they possess.

The COVID-19 testing centers at Bergen Community College in Paramus and at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel – run by the state government and Federal Emergency Management Agency – have frequently reached capacity less than an hour after opening.

Murphy said Thursday he would expand BCC’s daily test capacity from 350 a day to 500 a day.

In response to a widely anticipated patient surge, the Murphy administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are bringing two decommissioned hospitals back online, one in Woodbury and another in Plainfield.

EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing, Click to receive free EP Blog updates and please tell your friends.

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Franny McManimon, former New Jersey state senator, dies at 93

Hugely likable Democrat spent 20 years as a legislator and 30 years as Hamilton’s recreation chief

By David Wildstein, NJ Globe
March 26 2020 9:41 pm

Former State Sen. Francis J. McManimon, an enormously affable, cigar-chomping Mercer County Democrat who served in the New Jersey Legislature for 20 years, passed away today.  He was 93.

McManimon served as superintendent of the Hamilton Township Department of Parks and Recreation from 1959 to 1989.

He made his first bid for public office in 1967, seeking a State Assembly seat in a newly-drawn Mercer County district.

In what turned out to be a Republican year – it was the sixth year of Democrat Richard J. Hughes’ governorship – McManimon lost to Republican John Selecky, the mayor of West Windsor, by 2,118 votes.

The top vote-getter in that race was Republican William Schluter, a Pennington township committeeman.  McManimon’s running mate, Lloyd Carver, a Lawrence Councilman and the dean of admissions at Trenton Junior College, ran 622 votes behind him.

Lines were redrawn again in 1971 to create a Hamilton-Trenton legislative district.

Francis J. McManimon (D-Hamilton) as a State Assemblyman from Mercer County in 1976. Photo from the David Wildstein Collection.

The retirement of five-term State Sen. Sido Ridolfi, a former Senate President, opened a State Senate seat for Assemblyman Joseph Merlino (D-Trenton).  McManimon, a close political ally of former State Sen. and Mercer Democratic chairman Dick Coffee, ran for Merlino’s Assembly seat.

McManimon was the top vote-getter, running 4,629 votes ahead of his running mate, four-term Assemblyman S. Howard Woodson (D-Trenton).  One of the Republicans was Jack Rafferty, a 33-year-old Hamilton Township councilman who would go on to serve 24 years as mayor.

Woodson defeated Rafferty by 2,838 votes, with Republican Peter Rossi finishing 2,732 votes behind Rafferty.  McManimon’s plurality over Rafferty was 7,467 and 10,199 over Rossi.

His niece, Jane, married the son of Gov. William T. Cahill in 1972.

In the 1973 Watergate landslide that propelled Democrats into a 66-14 majority in the New Jersey Assembly, McManimon won re-election by 19,528 votes over Republican Harry Dearden.  He finished 5,122 votes ahead of Woodson, who became the first African American Assembly Speaker in state history.

Former Hamilton mayor Albert DeMartin decided to run off the line for Assembly in the 1975 Democratic primary, giving Woodson, the sitting Speaker, and McManimon a real primary challenge.

DeMartin made an issue of Woodson’s interest in leaving the legislature to join Gov. Brendan Byrne’s cabinet as president of the New Jersey Civil Service Commission.

McManimon was again the top vote-getter with 17,546 votes.  Woodson defeated DeMartin by 2,185 votes, 14,021 to 11,836.    In a primary that attracted a relatively heavy 35% turnout, DeMartin won Hamilton by over 2,000 votes, but Woodson doubled that plurality in Trenton.

The general election that year was a breeze.  McManimon ran 4,277 votes ahead of Woodson, and 16,189 ahead of Republican Jay Destribats.  The other Republican, Richard Harrison, ran 16,321 votes behind McManimon.

Woodson wound up resigning in 1976 to take the Civil Service Commission post.  A special election that year for his Assembly seat was won by Helen Chiarello Szabo, the vice chair of the Mercer County Democratic Committee.  She defeated Republican Carmen Armenti, the former mayor of Trenton, by nearly 7,000 votes.

McManimon went on to massive re-election victories for his State Assembly seat in the next two elections, exceeding 2-1 victories both times.

He outpolled Republican David Wriggins by 22,682 votes in 1977, and by 12,173 votes against Republican Michael Angarone in 1979.  His 1979 win was with a new running mate, Gerald Stockman, who won a 1978 special election when Szabo stepped down to become Mercer County Superintendent of Elections.

Redistricting in 1981 separated Hamilton and Trenton into separate legislative districts.

McManimon ran in the new 14th district, which included parts of Middlesex and Somerset counties.  Stockman won the 15th district Senate seat that was vacated when Merlino, the Senate President, ran for governor.

He defeated Republican Thomas Colitsas, an accountant from West Windsor, by 8,446 votes, 58%-42%.

The Assembly race in the new 14th was much closer: four-term incumbent Joseph Patero (D-Manville) ran with Joseph Bocchini, Jr., a 37-year-old attorney from Hamilton.  Patero ran 336 votes ahead of Bocchini, who defeated Republican Paul Kramer, the Hamilton Township Improvement Authority chairman, by just 660 votes.

When 29-year-old freshman Republican Rep. Christopher Smith (R-Hamilton) sought re-election to a second term in 1982, the Democrat that frightened him the most was McManimon.  Merlino ran instead and lost.

With two popular GOP incumbents up for re-election – Rafferty as mayor and Mercer County Executive Bill Mathesius, Republicans believed they could make a play for the 14th in 1983.

They recruited former Franklin mayor Charles B.W. Durand to take on McManimon, with Hamilton councilman Donald Tamutsas and Colitsas running for Assembly.

McManimon crushed Durand by 27 percentage points, a 12,928-vote margin (64%-37%).

Spared having to run in 1985, when Republican Gov. Thomas Kean won a landslide re-election, McManimon watched Rafferty beat Patero by 1,253 votes.   Bocchini ran 516 votes ahead of Rafferty, and 4,287 ahead of Colitsas.

Rafferty’s unimpressive win meant that he couldn’t frighten McManimon out of the 1987 Senate race.  Indeed, internal Republican polling that year showed that if Rafferty attempted to run for re-election as mayor and jeep his Assembly seat, he could lose both.

Instead, Rafferty left the legislature after one term and refocused on his local post.

A sign designating the New Jersey State Senator Francis J. McManimon Highway on I-195 in Mercer County. Photo courtesy of Facebook.

McManimon faced former South Brunswick GOP municipal chairman Michael Richmond and beat him by 13,651 votes, 64%-36%.

Democrats won both Assembly seats: with Bocchini giving up his post to run for county executive, Democrats nominated Patero and Mercer County Freeholder Anthony “Skip” Cimino in a primary against Janice Mironov, the East Windsor Democratic municipal chair.  Patero and Cimino easily won the general election against Hamilton’s Dave Kenny and WCTC radio personality Walt Sodie.

McManimon’s political career ended abruptly in 1991 when his support for Democratic Gov. Jim Florio’s $2.8 billion tax increase cost him his Senate seat.

His district had been redrawn to become more favorable to Republicans.  McManimon lost Franklin Township and now had Hamilton, East Windsor, Hightstown and Washington (now Robbinsville) in Mercer County and Cranbury, Helmetta, Jamesburg, Monroe, Plainsboro and South Brunswick in Middlesex.

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Video: Doctor demonstrates best ways to sanitize groceries and take-out food

By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor

This is the most current video for New CDC (Center for Disease Control) data, safe takeout food practices, and an updated practice for safe grocery shopping/handling.

You may already be practicing many of these safety tips to protect yourself from the coronavirus, but you may find a few that will surprise you. Stay healthy.

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N.J. coronavirus outbreak hits 6,876 cases with 81 deaths. Another 2,492 positive tests in huge single-day increase.

By Matt Arco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

New Jersey’s total known cases of the coronavirus increased to at least 6,876 with 81 deaths as officials announced another 2,492 new positive test results Thursday, by far the largest single-day increase since the outbreak.

“Sadly the number of lost lives is going up,” Gov. Phil Murphy said at the Trenton War Memorial during the latest press briefing. “That’s partly due to some community spread.”

Murphy announced 19 new deaths from coronavirus. The details were not immediately available. New Jersey ranks second in the nation for coronavirus cases after New York.

Of the 2,492 new cases reported Thursday, Murphy said 436 came directly from the two state-run mass testing sites at Bergen Community College and the PNC Bank Arts Center in Monmouth County

LOCATIONCASESDEATHS
New Jersey6,87681
New York State37,258385
New York City20,000280
Pennsylvania1,12711
Philadelphia3421
United States69,2461,046
Worldwide492,60022,184

Note: Data includes confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported by the CDC, state health officials and other health agencies since Jan. 21. Updated: March 26 at 2:05 p.m..Table: Len Melisurgo  Source: Johns Hopkins Univ., Gov. Cuomo, NBC4, State Health Departments in NJ, NY, PAGet the data

The figures come a day after state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said hospitals in Bergen, Essex and Hudson counties were already feeling the strain of cases and the state continues to work on models predicting when the peak will occur. She said the coronavirus peak in those hard-hit New Jersey counties could be three weeks away.

“We’ve asked the hospitals and the health care providers in those counties to just be aware,” Persichilli said on Wednesday.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, meanwhile, has said he expects the peak of his state’s cases to be the next 14 to 21 days. Persichilli said northern New Jersey counties are slightly behind but following that trend.

“There’s a good a possibility that they’re going to see a peak after that — probably 21 too, it could be 60 days even,” Persichilli said Wednesday. “Our exponential growth rate based on the number of positive cases reported daily is similar in northern New Jersey.”

New Jersey officials have not released the number of residents who have recovered from the COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. It’s also possible many people who haven’t been tested are infected.

In an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus, Murphy has closed all schools in the state, ordered people to stay at home except for necessary travel, banned social gatherings, and ordered non-essential retail businesses to close until further notice. Officials have promised to prosecute those who violate the orders.

Though some commentators are pushing to restart the U.S. economy, Murphy has vowed to keep New Jersey’s restrictions in place here until science shows it’s safe.

“If we go too early, I’m fearful we will throw gasoline on the fire, and we’ll have a much bigger challenge on our hands,” he said Thursday morning during an appearance on MSNBC.

Murphy has also announced a way for workers to report companies where people who are able to do their jobs from home were told by their employers to report to the office. The governor said New Jersey employers should not be forcing their workers to go to offices if those people are able to do their jobs remotely, per his executive order.

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As of Thursday morning, the virus has infected more than 487,000 people and killed more than 22,000 people across the globe, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University. Of those cases, more than 117,00 people have recovered.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook.

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Hotels in Pa volunteer to make room for patients as state braces for possible coronavirus surge

WALLACE MCKELVEY PennLive | The Patriot-News 
MAR 26, 2020 9:30 AM

This story was produced as part of a joint effort among Spotlight PA, LNP Media Group, PennLive, PA Post, and WITF to cover how Pennsylvania state government is responding to the coronavirus. Sign up for Spotlight PA’s newsletter.

HARRISBURG — With the number of COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania projected to rise sharply in the coming weeks, state officials are looking at all possible solutions to an expected shortage of hospital beds, including making use of hotels and convention centers.

Medical facilities statewide reported about 3,400 intensive care beds at last count. But a recent Harvard Global Health Institute study found the state would need from 2.5 to 7 times that number depending on how effective social distancing efforts are in avoiding a spike in patients.

“There’s a substantial likelihood we are going to see a surge that might reflect the worst-case scenario,” said Jeremy Kahn, a professor of critical care medicine and health policy at the University of Pittsburgh. “I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything as too extreme.”

State officials have repeatedly declined to detail exactly what their planning entails, but they are likely to follow the example of other states that have taken significant steps.

In New York, now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, officials are transforming the massive Jacob Javits Center to accommodate nearly 2,000 hospital beds. Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, which has reported less than half of Pennsylvania’s number of confirmed cases, announced plans Monday to convert the Baltimore Convention Center and a nearby Hilton Hotel into field hospitals to add an additional 900 beds.

Dr. Kahn, a practicing doctor in the intensive care unit at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, said transforming these kinds of spaces into field hospitals is challenging.

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Even rudimentary hospital rooms are usually equipped with oxygen, suction, lighting, and telemonitoring equipment to track a patient’s blood pressure and heart rate. All of that requires a stable electricity supply that may be difficult to add to a building not designed for it.

“Frankly, I’m a little skeptical this is the most efficient solution to meet the demand for this influx of patients,” he said.

The more likely solution, Dr. Kahn said, is that these makeshift hospitals would be used to care for less severe cases or those who are recovering and no longer need intensive care.

When asked about the possible bed shortage Wednesday, Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine said, “We might use hotels or other spaces to have people convalesce with limited medical care that they might need.”

The best course the state could take, Dr. Kahn said, would be to move less severe cases to another facility before putting critically ill patients “in an ad-hoc ICU at a dorm or hotel.”

This would, in essence, require authorities to shift patients “downstream.” As patients with COVID-19 begin flooding the ICU, he said, less severe patients could be moved to other wards in the same hospital, while patients from those wards could move to skilled nursing homes and the patients from those nursing homes could move into the new makeshift hospitals in places like college dormitories, convention centers, and hotels.

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John Longstreet, president of the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, said a number of hotels have volunteered their facilities through the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency’s sheltering task force. The coronavirus rendered most of them vacant, he said.

“It’s much more like a war setting than anything I’ve ever experienced,” said Mr. Longstreet, who’s been in the hotel business for five decades. “But I want to clarify: The hotels are not being commandeered. They’re willingly entering into relationships to help.”

PEMA spokesperson Ruth Miller said there are no plans to force hotels to serve as hospital space, noting “there are private sector partners that are volunteering space and resources.” As of Wednesday, the agency didn’t yet have details on how it would pay for such a move.

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, announced a $1 million plan, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to convert some 10,000 rooms in hotels and college dormitories into hospital space to treat COVID-19 patients in New York City. The agency was looking at similar operations in California, New Jersey, and Washington state.

Lt. Gen. Semonite said such facilities would have to be sanitized and retrofitted in order to keep individual patients in isolation, according to a report by McClatchy. COVID-19 patients would also have to be separated from other ICU patients.

That involves using a hotel room’s air conditioning unit to create a “negative pressure room,” Lt. Gen. Semonite said, creating a vacuum that isolates that patient’s space from the rest of the facility.

The last step, he said, is “a big piece of plastic with a zipper on it” over the door. (Think the isolation units in Hollywood films like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or Outbreak.)

Just a few weeks ago, Heidi Howard coordinated events and meetings for the lodging association in Pennsylvania. That work evaporated with the spread of the coronavirus, and instead the trade group was asked by the Wolf administration to help with emergency preparations.

Ms. Howard’s job now includes passing along information about hotels willing to serve as field hospitals.

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Former DEP commissioner Bob Martin joins Chris Christie’s lobbying firm

By Gabrielle Saulsbery, NJBIZ
March 26, 2020 9:00 am

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Bob-Martin-at-NJDEP.jpg
Bob Martin at NJDEP

Former New Jersey Commissioner of Environmental Protection Bob Martin has joined former Gov. Chris Christie’s lobbying firm, Christie 55 Solutions LLC, as managing partner.

“Bob brings a wealth of business, consulting and public policy experience to our firm. He has deep utility and energy knowledge and unparalleled environmental and regulatory expertise,” Christie said in a statement. “Bob is an important addition to the firm and will bring additional value to our clients.”

Former NJ Gov. Chris Christie

As commissioner of environmental protection from 2010 to 2018, Martin managed a multi-million dollar annual state budget and implemented DEP’s mission to protect New Jersey’s air, water, land, and natural and historic resources. His knowledge spans state and federal environmental and land use laws and regulations, and he has worked with numerous federal agencies and departments.

Prior to his position at the DEP, Martin was a partner at Accenture LLP  for more than 25 years. With extensive experience in all aspects of business and management consulting, he advised senior executives in a variety of industries.

His experience also includes business strategy and planning, business transformation and operations reengineering, IT strategy, systems implementation and change management.

Martin is the second Christie administration connection to join the firm since January, after Rich Bagger, Christie’s former chief of staff and a former global biopharmaceutical executive, joined in January.

Gabrielle Saulsbery, Albany native Gabrielle Saulsbery is a staff writer for NJBIZ and the newest thing in New Jersey. You can contact her at gsaulsbery@njbiz.com.

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