Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley today announced 186 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the city, bringing the total number of cases since the pandemic began to 16,040. The count was low, Farley said, in part because of reduced testing and reporting on Sundays.
 
Farley had no new deaths to report of COVID-19 and reduced the total number of deaths in the city from 727 to 726. He attributed the lack of fatalities reported to lower weekend testing rates and said the reduction was because of an error that has since been corrected.

Farley said he was encouraged the new numbers and that he was hopeful they represented a sign that the worst of the pandemic was in the past. He said, however, that warm weather posed a risk if people forget to continue to practice social distancing. “We need to establish the expectation that people wear masks when out of the home,” he said. “People want to return to normal activity, but we won’t be able to do that safely unless everyone protects each other by wearing masks.”