It’s happened at schools, stores and offices, warehouses and city halls: Someone who might be infected with the coronavirus passes through.
The building often closes. Then come the calming words: deep cleaning.
The idea is that a thorough cleaning and disinfecting could help prevent people from getting sick. The virus is spread mainly through person-to-person contact, though people can also catch it from droplets exhaled when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Those droplets can stick to surfaces, and the virus can survive for hours or days, according to health officials.
A deep clean is supposed to kill it.
The term sounds official, but it isn’t. It has no standardized definition.
One company says the right approach is using a mechanical sprayer or thermal fogger that mists disinfectant into the air, then wiping all surfaces. Another swears by taking everything out of each room, disinfecting it all and then putting it back.
Some have warned against trusting competitors who, they say, only wipe down places that get touched a lot, like doorknobs or handles, or don’t require workers to wear heavy-duty protective gear.
“Deep cleaning is really just a term they use to make the public feel warm and fuzzy,” said Erick McCallum, founder of Texas-based the Cleaning Guys, which handled ebola cleanup during a 2014 outbreak in Dallas.
Health experts say it’s enough to clean frequently with soap, alcohol or bleach-based products. “You don’t need any unusual procedures or cleaning agents,” says Dr. Timothy Brewer, professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA.
That hasn’t stopped the onslaught of calls for deep cleaning.
The Servpro Extreme Response Team typically handles calls related to water or fire damage repairs in California, Nevada and Arizona. Now it gets about 100 inquiries a week on coronavirus cleanings and goes on four related calls a day.
Aftermath Services, based in Illinois, generally cleans up crime scenes and biohazards. The flood of calls about coronavirus-related cleanings threatened to overwhelm it, so the company pulled people from its finance department to help answer the phones.
“It’s all hands on deck,” said Casey Decker, Aftermath’s vice president of field services.
The calls haven’t slowed even as more companies require employees to work from home.
As restaurants, bars, gyms and other businesses close their doors, some professional cleaning firms expect demand will ramp up. Buildings can be thoroughly disinfected when there are no customers or employees inside.
“It’s very possible that almost everything will end up shutting down,” said Vanessa Cabrera, director of client services at All Clean Inc. MD, which cleans commercial and industrial properties on the East Coast. “When that’s the case, then we’ll have a lot more people calling and more jobs to do…. They’re going to want a deep clean of their facility.”
Workers, at times, might wear full-face respirators, one-piece protective suits, two pairs of gloves and booties, particularly if they’re at a place that had confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Brewer, the UCLA professor, said booties and respirators aren’t necessary. A face shield or surgical mask will do.
“When you’re going in and you’re 100% encapsulated, you feel like you can go up against anything,” Decker said of wearing a protective suit.
Cabrera’s mother, Adriana Corona, a manager at All Clean Inc. MD, is often in the field with workers and said they now wear more protective gear than they would during their normal course of work. She’s also done online training on how to do deep cleanings.
She said she hasn’t been afraid of becoming infected while on jobs. “We just clean and disinfect everything,” Corona said.
Clean Harbors, a Massachusetts company that specializes in hazardous waste removal, designates three different zones for its employees when they arrive at a decontamination job.
Workers suit up in the “warm zone” before entering the “hot zone,” where decontamination occurs. After the job is done, one person who did not enter the building helps the others take off their suits back in the warm zone before they can enter the “cold zone,” or clean area.
The protective gear is put into a drum and incinerated. The respirators are rinsed with bleach, soap and water before they’re used again.
In some ways, there’s precedent for the kind of thorough disinfection that cleaning companies are now doing. Some have compared the work to sewage and mold removal or to cleanups of crime scenes and meth labs. Some even have experience with other viruses, such as MRSA or norovirus.
“We’re used to this,” said Chuck Geer, senior vice president of field services at Clean Harbors. “It’s not uncommon at any point in time for our teams to respond to something like this.”
His company, he said, helped clean up ground zero in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; decontaminated oily boats after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico; and also has experience with anthrax.
In each of these cases, “you normally know exactly what you’re cleaning up,” Geer said. But with the coronavirus, “you can’t see it,” he said. “When you go into a room or a building, you have to disinfect everything.”
Art Dickerson, president of restoration firm Paul Davis Commercial, compared coronavirus cleanings to sewage or mold cleanups. Workers use the same types of disinfectants.
But these recent jobs are on “a wider scale,” he said. “We only get so many mold jobs or sewage jobs a year.”
The demand for coronavirus cleanings has shifted Aftermath’s primary business from crime-scene cleanups to “virucidal disinfection,” a term a company official acknowledged does not roll off the tongue.
Aftermath now gets about 500 to 600 calls per day nationwide, up from its usual 50 to 75 calls. Calls have been coming in from all parts of the country, though California is a hot spot, said Vikas Chopra, director of marketing.
Prices vary depending on the size of the place to be cleaned and the types of services desired. For a 800- to 1,000-square-foot building, All Clean Inc. MD charges between $800 and $1,200. Servpro charges 50 cents to $2.50 per square foot.
But it’s important not to go overboard with the cleaning.
Using antimicrobial solutions could inadvertently lead to antimicrobial resistance that can lead to super bugs, said Erica Hartmann, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, who specializes in environmental microbiology.
“Yes, wash your hands. Yes, you can disinfect high-touch surfaces, but within reason,” she said. “We’re not aiming to sterilize everything around us.”
Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.
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The coronavirus continues to devastate Europe, with Italy suffering the most cases. In the past 24 hours, 627 people have died in Italy, while thousands more are being treated in overcrowded hospitals. Ian Lee reports.
Energy. Environment. Economy. A reporting project of NPR member stations
In this Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019 photo, pipes lay along a construction site on the Mariner East pipeline in a residential neighborhood in Exton, Pa. Matt Rourke/AP photo
Susan Phillips reports for StateImpact
Construction on the Mariner East pipeline appears to be halted by Gov. Wolf’s new order that shuts down all “non-life-sustaining” operations and businesses.
The new shut-down list released by Wolf Thursday evening indicates all construction projects, including “sub-utility” construction, cannot continue physical operations.
Neither Wolf’s office nor pipeline builder Sunoco responded immediately to requests to confirm that Mariner East construction must stop.
Earlier on Thursday, the company, as well as the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, had said construction would continue during the coronavirus outbreak despite criticism from pipeline opponents in suburban Philadelphia.
A statement from the PUC issued before Wolf’s latest order explained that since the commission had designated the natural gas liquid pipeline a public utility, and construction sites had not been included as part of Wolf’s list of “non-essential” businesses, construction on the line could continue.
“As they are essential services, utilities are expected to continue operations, including construction projects,” the statement reads.
The PUC said staff is coordinating with federal pipeline safety regulators, who have not directed pipeline builders to halt construction. State Sen. Andrew Dinniman, a Democrat from Chester County who is a vocal opponent of the Mariner East project, had written to the PUC asking it to shut down construction in lieu of the coronavirus outbreak.
“What we see here is that the PUC is trapped in its initial decision,” Dinniman said. “The PUC defined this pipeline as a public utility based on a 1930s gasoline line. The truth is the pipeline does not provide any essential public utility service in the Commonwealth.”
The original Mariner East line, Mariner East 1, is a former gasoline pipeline built in the 1930s to transport gas from Philadelphia refineries to rural Pennsylvania.
The PUC approved public utility status for the line when Sunoco, now owned by Energy Transfer, proposed to reverse flow and ship natural gas liquids through the line. The Mariner East 2 and 2x lines were green-lighted based on the original utility status that dates back to the 1930s.
The lines now ship natural gas liquids across the state for export to a plastics manufacturer in Scotland. While construction on the lines is mostly complete, some parts of the line were held up after sinkholes developed in Chester County. The company only recently got the approval from the DEP to restart construction on the remaining sections.
A union representing some of the pipeline workers says he feels the sites are abiding by proper coronavirus precautions.
“As long as the job is open, our members want to work,” said Jim Snell, business manager for Steamfitters Local 420. “I have not heard of any issues. That said, we are taking all necessary precautions (hand wipes, soaps, sanitizers, social distancing, etc.) with LU420 and our contractors.”
Snell said if someone feels sick, there is no pressure for them to work.
That sentiment differs from the building trades rank and file at the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, who flooded their local representatives with calls about concerns over coronavirus and crowding at the job site. The Shell cracker plant shut its operations on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Energy Transfer posted on its website that it was taking “all possible precautions to protect personal and public health and safety,” including social distancing, at Mariner East construction sites.
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As more states mandate that people stay home for all but their essential needs, offices around the country will finally have to confront their squeamishness about remote work.
For some offices, those reservations may be institutional. Managers who believe employees are more productive at the office are now testing that hypothesis at scale, or will soon have to, and companies that value their office culture will have to try replicating it virtually. Along the way, they may find that remote work isn’t as detrimental as they thought.
But there’s also a more mundane reason that working from home could become a lasting option for office workers: Companies are finally investing in the technology they’ve always needed to make remote work possible. Investments that might’ve seemed superfluous before have now become necessary to keep their businesses running.
“We once assumed this shift would take place over 5 to 10 years, but now we are seeing that it is happening much, much faster,” says Sagi Gidali, the cofounder and chief product officer for Perimeter 81, a company that helps businesses secure their networks for remote workers.
THE SCRAMBLE TO SUPPORT REMOTE WORK
It’s easy to assume that sending workers home is trivial from a technical standpoint. Cloud services such as Slack and Google’s G Suite are designed to be accessible from anywhere, so you might think workers could simply access those same services from their computers at home.
But for many office workers, it’s not that simple. Companies in the financial and insurance sectors, for instance, are dealing with sensitive data that can’t leave their own internal servers, and some companies use proprietary apps that they only offer from within their office networks. While remote workers can sometimes use corporate virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access their office networks, sending everyone home requires more network bandwidth and expanded hardware to encrypt the connections.
WE ONCE ASSUMED THIS SHIFT WOULD TAKE PLACE OVER 5 TO 10 YEARS.”
SAGI GIDALI, PERIMETER 81
“These offices don’t necessarily have or pay for the network bandwidth to assume that everybody’s coming in from the outside,” says Thomas Hatch, an IT infrastructure expert who is the founder and CTO of SaltStack.
Simon Migliano, the head of research at Top10VPN.com, says he’s heard anecdotally that some teams were caught unprepared and have been rushing to stress-test their VPNs to make sure they can handle the load.
“We know of at least one company whose VPN capacity is 8,000 users,” Migliano says via email. “Now, they have over five times as many employees as that trying to connect, with predictably frustrating results.”
Rob Smith, an analyst with Gartner, says he’s been inundated with calls from companies that are now trying to put remote work solutions in place. He estimates that roughly one-third of all companies were ill-equipped to send all their employees home, while another third had no remote work plan in place at all.
“My number one inquiry call is, ‘We have X number of employees who have never worked from home before, who are now forced to work from home. What do we do?’” Smith says.
The irony, Smith says, is that corporate VPN is an aging technology, and before the coronavirus pandemic, he believed it was on its way out as more companies migrated to cloud-based services. As a result, companies weren’t really interested in beefing up their VPNs so that more employees could work at home.
THEY JUST DIDN’T CARE. IT WASN’T EVEN A COST ISSUE.”
ROB SMITH, GARTNER
“They just didn’t care,’ Smith says. “‘It wasn’t even a cost issue. It was, ‘We don’t need it, or it’s good enough what we have.’”
Gidali’s company, Perimeter 81, has also seen an uptick in demand. The company presents itself as a hybrid solution, allowing workers to access a company’s internal networks and cloud-based services through a single secure platform. While it was onboarding about 70 to 80 new clients per month before the coronavirus outbreak, its rate of new clients has roughly quadrupled since.
“There was a hesitancy to begin that process of using a cloud service, of migrating to the cloud. And now the reality is here that we have to be prepared for these kinds of scenarios,” says Karen Mesoznik, Perimeter 81’s corporate marketing director.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Now that companies are making these investments, experts believe they’ll be much more likely to stick with remote work—at least as a part-time option—even after the threat of COVID-19 subsides. Both Perimeter 81’s Sagi Gidali and Gartner’s Rob Smith say workers are more productive when they can stay at home, and severalstudiesback this up.
“It’s an old-school mentality to think you have to have a presence in an office and that people only work within the office,” Smith says. “Once people adjust to working from home, they actually do more work and work longer because they’re not dealing with commutes, they’re not dealing with being interrupted.”
That’s not to say some institutional hurdles won’t remain. In addition to counseling companies on how to make the technological shift, Smith says he’s been giving companies cultural pointers, advising them, for instance, to factor some “water cooler” time into conference calls so workers can talk about other things.
“You’ve got to be able to budget that human element into working from home,” Smith says. “It’s not just the technology. It’s so much more than that.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jared Newman covers apps and technology from his remote Cincinnati outpost. He also writes two newsletters, Cord Cutter Weekly and Advisorator.
Pa governor Wolf tests negative for coronavirus, issues stay-at-home order for Philly and its suburbs. Other regional and national coronavirus stories below.
New Jersey now has at least 2,844 coronavirus cases with 27 deaths as officials announced Monday 935 new positive tests on the same day the second state-run testing site opened in Monmouth County and quickly hit capacity due to overwhelming demand.
“There’s clearly community spread going on,” Gov. Phil Murphy said at a news briefing in Trenton Monday. “There’s also a lot more testing going on. As the testing regime expands, we’re going to see these numbers go up in a big way. We are getting a clearer and better sense of how far the coronavirus has already spread.”
The seven new deaths reported Monday five men and two women ranging in age from 57 to 91. Two of those who died were from Bergen County and there was one death each in Warren, Somerset, Union, Passaic and Essex counties. One of the deaths was associated with a longterm care facility and two cases have confirmed to have involved patients with underlying health conditions.
Murphy also announced Monday that residents should expect New Jersey schools to remain closed for “an extended period of time.” No decision has been made on a timetable, he said.
Murphy took sweeping steps Saturday to slow the outbreak by signing executive orders shutting down non-essential retail businesses, canceling all public gatherings and instructing people to “quite simply stay at home.”
“Unless you are needed as part of our front line efforts, please stay home,” Murphy said. “I know the numbers you hear every day are worrying. Each number is a fellow New Jerseyan who needs us. Let’s all do our part.”
The new orders calls for nearly all New Jersey residents to stay in and refrain from travel — except for obtaining food and medicine, seeking medical attention, visiting family and close friends, exercise, and reporting to work at a business that is still open.
The non-essential business shutdown took effect Saturday night. The list of essential businesses that are allowed to keep operating is, according to the state website.
Manufacturing, industrial, logistics, ports, heavy construction, shipping, food production, food delivery, and other commercial operations; and medical facilities where a sick or injured person is given care or treatment, such as doctor’s offices, hospitals, dentist offices, long-term care facilities and other medical offices.
On Sunday, Murphy said he’s “really damned unhappy” to hear stories about New Jersey residents not abiding by his stay-at-home order to combat the coronavirus outbreak and warned Sunday to expected a law enforcement crackdown.
“There’s too many people not paying attention to this. We’ve about had it. We’re not happy,” Murphy said Sunday.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer
TOM GRALISH / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER A sign at the 8th Street ramp to westbound I-676 (Vine Street Expressway) Mar. 22, 2020 reflect Philadelphia’s order that all residents stay in their homes except when engaging in life-sustaining activities beginning at 8 a.m. Monday because of the coronavirus crisis.
Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to issue a “stay-at-home” order today for Philadelphia and its suburbs, as well as Monroe and Allegheny Counties, taking the fight against the coronavirus to a new level by requiring residents to remain inside except for essential trips such as buying food or seeking medical help.
The order will apply to Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties in the southeast, Monroe County in the northeast, and Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania, according to four sources with knowledge of the governor’s plans.
It was not immediately known when the order will take effect, how long it will last, or what enforcement might entail. Wolf is expected to make the announcement this afternoon, according to the sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan.
Wolf’s order comes a day after Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney issued a similar order for the city’s 1.6 million residents, which began at 8 a.m. on Monday.
Coronavirus frauds spread, preying on Medicare recipients, feds say
Scam artists are preying on older people’s fears by peddling fake tests for the coronavirus to Medicare recipients, a federal law enforcement agency warned on Monday.
The Health and Human Services inspector general’s office said it’s seeing marketing schemes rapidly pivot to offering tests for COVID-19 and “Senior Care Packages” with hand sanitizer or even tout a vaccine, which doesn’t exist. Some marketers falsely claim that President Donald Trump has ordered that seniors get tested.
It’s all a trick to get personal information that can be used to bill federal and state health programs, said Christian Schrank, assistant inspector general for investigations.
“It’s a straight-up ruse to get your Medicare number or your Social Security number under the guise of having a test kit or a sanitary kit sent to you,” Schrank said. Often the caller will hang up as soon as that number is provided.
Gov. Tom Wolf tests negative for coronavirus after exposure concern
COMMONWEALTH MEDIA SERVICES / COMMONWEALTH MEDIA SERVICESGovernor Tom Wolf speaking by video feed while Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine stands at the podium during the virtual press conference.
Gov. Tom Wolf recently tested negative for the coronavirus after being alerted to a potential exposure, his office said Monday.
The governor was tested after his office was contacted by someone who had been near Wolf and who was showing symptoms of the illness, a spokesperson said. That person was also tested and found to be negative, according to the office.
“The measure was taken out of an abundance of caution,” the spokesperson, Lyndsay Kensinger, said. “We do not have any evidence that the governor has been in contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.”
The governor is working remotely but is not in quarantine.
— Angela 1 hour ago11:45 AM – March 23, 2020
Klobuchar’s husband tests positive, senator says she won’t miss vote on recovery package
Klobuchar said she won’t be tested for coronavirus or placed in self-quarantine because her husband has been back home in Minnesota, while she’s been working in Washington, D.C.
“I love my husband so very much and not being able to be there at the hospital by his side is one of the hardest things about this disease,” Klobuchar wrote.
My husband has coronavirus. I love him & not being able to be by his side is one of the hardest things about this disease. So many are going through this & much worse. I pray for him & you & meanwhile I will do all I can to get help to the American people.https://medium.com/@Amy_Klobuchar/statement-from-senator-amy-klobuchar-c4195302844 …
– Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.).Paul tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday after attending an event in Kentucky two weeks ago where several attendees have tested positive
– Sens. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) and Mike Lee (R., Utah). Both Romney and Lee announced on Sunday they will self-quarantine themselves following Paul’s diagnosis. Both are expected to be away for 14 days.
Other senators have placed themselves in self-quarantine and have since re-emerged, including Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), Ted Cruz (R., Texas, Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), and Rick Scott (R., Fla.).
— Rob Tornoe1 hour ago11:25 AM – March 23, 2020
Pa., N.J. offer mental health assistance during coronavirus lockdowns
As people across Pennsylvania enter the second week of home isolation to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, state health officials reminded residents on Monday that mental health help is available via text.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Delaware rose to 64 on Monday morning, following Gov. John Carney’s order for residents to stay at home.
There were 56 cases Sunday. According to health officials, at least six people have been hospitalized, and three are critically ill.
Like Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Delaware announced the closure of nonessential businesses, which will go into effect Tuesday at 8 a.m.
Residents are permitted to leave their homes to go grocery shopping, pick up take-out food purchases, receive medical treatment or care for an immediate relative, and exercise. They can also leave to go to work, if their employer is listed as an essential business.
— Rob Tornoe
Temple, Villanova cancel on-campus commencements
Temple University and Villanova University announced Monday they are calling off their on-campus commencements.
Temple’s had been scheduled for May 7; Villanova’s for May 15.
“While we will not hold the traditional in-person ceremony … we are exploring alternatives to this long-standing celebration of your achievement,” Temple President Richard M. Englert and Provost JoAnne A. Epps said in an email to the campus Monday morning.
Temple also has canceled all on-campus events through May 31, and announced that classes in its first summer session would be held online.
TIM TAI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERA pedestrian is reflected while walking past the shuttered Barnes and Noble on Temple University’s campus in North Philadelphia on Tuesday, March 17, 2020. The university has transitioned its classes online due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and nonessential retail businesses have been ordered to shut down.
In a campus email. Villanova president the Rev. Peter M. Donohue said, “I will confer your degrees via a live-streamed event.”
An in-person celebration will be held when it is safe, he said.
Classes for the rest of the spring semester will be conducted online, the president said. The university also issued a temporary hiring freeze.
— Susan Snyder 2 hours ago9:55 AM – March 23, 2020
N.J. top court orders release of low-level offenders to thwart spread of coronavirus
New Jersey’s Supreme Court has ordered individuals serving time for low-level offenses in county jails to be temporarily released to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in correctional facilities.
The order takes effect Tuesday and could mean the release of up to 1,000 people, according to the ACLU of New Jersey, one of the organizations that requested New Jersey take this measure.
“Unprecedented times call for rethinking the normal way of doing things,” Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey said, “and in this case, it means releasing people who pose little risk to their communities for the sake of public health and the dignity of people who are incarcerated.”
Individuals are to be temporarily released from jail while New Jersey is under a state of emergency. Once the governor declares the emergency over, judges will decide whether to commute sentences of anyone that has been released. Those who have tested positive for the coronavirus will not be released. County prosecutors can file objections to keep specific people detained, if they believe it is necessary.
— Pranshu Verma
Surgeon general warns: ‘This week, it’s going to get bad’
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams issued a dire warning for the country Monday as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise.
“I want America to understand. This week, it’s going to get bad,” Adams said on NBC’s Today show. “We really need to come together as a nation.”
During a separate interview on Fox & Friends, Adams attempted to downplay the hype surrounding two antimalarial drugs President Trump has pointed to in recent days as a possible treatment for coronavirus. Medical experts — including Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force — have warned the drugs are untested in the treatment of COVID-19.
EVAN VUCCI / APSurgeon General Jerome Adams speaks during press briefing with the coronavirus task force, at the White House, Thursday, March 19, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“Here’s the thing about those drugs — there’s ‘may’ and ‘actually does’. This may be promising … We need to verify through studies that they actually work,” Adams said. “It’s not practical to think we’re going to treat our way out of this problem with new drugs, or with ventilators, or with supplies … We need more people talking about staying at home.”
As of Monday morning, there have been over 35,000 cases of coronavirus across the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University. At least 471 have died.
— Rob Tornoe
Stocks fall despite Federal Reserve’s new emergency efforts
Stocks opened slightly lower Monday despite unprecedented moves announced by the Federal Reserve to keep markets functioning amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened down about 1.5%, or about 280 points. The Nasdaq opened down slightly, while the S&P 500 opened down about 1% (about 20 points).
The Federal Reserve announced several new emergency programs Monday morning aimed at helping the economic impact caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
Among the moves are a commitment to buy an unlimited about of government bonds and mortgage securities and a program to buy certain corporate bonds “for the first time in its history,” according to the Washington Post.
“It has become clear that our economy will face severe disruption,” leaders of the Federal Reserve said in a statement. “The Federal Reserve is committed to using its full range of tools to support households, businesses, and the U.S. economy overall in this challenging time.”
Investors are also awaiting news about a massive stimulus deal being worked out in Congress aimed at helping individuals and businesses impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. As of Monday morning, legislators and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin were still working to reach an agreement on the details.
Stocks have dropped over 30% since setting a new record on Feb. 19. Last week, the Dow suffered its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, dropping 17.3%.
— Rob Tornoe
Pa. top court tosses challenge to Wolf’s ban non-life-sustaining businesses
JESSICA GRIFFIN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERA line of people wait outside of the Philadelphia Gun and Archery Club, in South Philadelphia, March 18, 2020. This location appears to be a gun shop that sells firearms and ammunition and a training facility. As of Wednesday morning, nearly 6,500 cases of the coronavirus have been reported in the United States, and 114 people had died. Cities around the United States, including Philadelphia, are increasing social restrictions in an attempt to slow the virus’ spread.
A divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed gun rights advocates’ legal challenge to Gov. Tom Wolf’s statewide order closing all “non-life-sustaining” businesses, clearing the way for enforcement of the mandate to begin Monday.
In an order issued late Sunday, the justices denied a petition brought by a Bucks County gun buyer and a Lancaster County gun store owner, who argued that the coronavirus clampdown violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Though, as a body, the appellate court offered no explanation for their decision in their two page order. Three of its justices dissented, saying they were “troubled by the uncertainty” set off by Wolf’s decision and suggested the administration consider a limited exception to gun sellers.
Though Gov. Wolf’s order has been in effect since Thursday, enforcement by the Pennsylvania State Police and the state Liquor Control Board and Department of Health and Agriculture was delayed until Monday morning to give businesses time to prepare and the administration to review thousands of waiver requests from companies and industry representatives around the state.
