The county commissioners announced Friday that while they are pleased Butler County will join 15 other counties in going to the green phase June 5, they have submitted a plan to Gov. Tom Wolf and state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine for the county to succeed in dealing with COVID-19 until a vaccine is approved for widespread use.

The COVID-19 Management and Recovery Plan for Reopening Butler County draft was created by the county's 10-person COVID-19 Task Force.

The commissioners hope the plan will not only be accepted by the governor, but that federal CARES money to be allocated to counties by Harrisburg will fund the components of the plan.

They also hope the plan will be used as a model by other counties looking to move through and beyond the green phase of the pandemic.

A major component of the plan is greatly increased testing for COVID-19 through expanded laboratory services at the Butler Health System, which is proposed to be named a reference lab by the state's Department of Health.

If that happens, the BHS lab could serve as the reference lab for five surrounding counties in the region.

Three new testing systems costing a total of about $409,000 would be purchased using the CARES funds from Harrisburg.

The systems would allow for fast, accurate and readily available testing for nursing homes, health care facilities, group homes, schools and other group populations to meet Wolf's testing recommendations.

With the new equipment and expanded facility, the BHS lab could test 3,000 to 5,000 people per week at a cost of about $30 per test.

The individual tests would be paid through the insurance of those tested. In the absence of insurance, the CARES funds in Harrisburg could be used, according to the plan.

The “community outreach and outbreak prevention” portion of the plan sees positive cases reported to the state's Department of Health, but instead of volunteers chosen by the state, local entities would perform contact tracing.

Commissioner Kevin Boozel said the commissioners agree that contact tracing should be carried out between residents and trusted county agencies such as Butler Health System, Cranberry Township EMS and other health professionals within the county.

“There's a trust factor in contact tracing, so you want to keep it local,” Boozel said.

Those who tested positive for COVID-19 would be contacted, asked who they have been with and for how long, and the tracer would then notify everyone who was in contact with the person who tested positive and recommend they self-quarantine for 14 days.

Boozel stressed that because of privacy laws, the tracer would not divulge the identity of the person who tested positive for COVID-19 to those being notified.

Commissioner Kim Geyer agreed on the importance of using county professionals, and not volunteers deployed by Harrisburg.

“It will produce better outcomes to the people we serve,” Geyer said.

Boozel said another important part of the plan is support for schools.

Rapid testing and screening programs for school employees that are carried out through collaboration with school nurses and information on tracing, how to respond to positive cases of COVID-19, and establishing isolation areas for those with symptoms are goals within the plan for schools.

Boozel said there is no indication as to how long it will take for Wolf and Levine to decide on the county's plan, or if they'll even consider it.

He said the four counties currently involved in a lawsuit against Wolf and Levine, which include Butler, Greene, Fayette and Washington, were excluded from a teleconference Friday with Wolf and Levine.

The four counties will be excluded from all calls with either official upon the advice of Wolf's attorneys, Boozel said.

“It's very disappointing,” Boozel said. “We worked very hard to make inroads with the state.”

The full COVID-19 Management and Recovery Plan for Reopening Butler County will be available on the commissioners' page on the county website, butlercountypa.gov.

Wolf news conference

In his daily briefing Friday, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that Butler County will move to green along with 15 others, including Allegheny, Armstrong, Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Clinton, Fayette, Fulton, Greene, Indiana, Lycoming, Mercer, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

“Again, the goal here is to make sure every Pennsylvanian is confident they are going to be safe moving from one of these phases to the next,” Wolf said.

In addition to the counties moving to green June 5, Wolf also announced that all counties currently in the red phase will move to the yellow phase June 5.

Both Wolf and Levine lauded the effort to bring more testing to the state.

By working with businesses such as Rite Aid, testing has climbed to 13,000 per day with 300 testing sites across the state. Both said contact tracing and more testing are still a focus for the state government.

“We want to make it accessible and available to the public in addition to going to the doctor's office or the hospital,” Levine said.

Wolf said the important thing to remember is the virus will still exist in the green phase, and there will still be a susceptible population. He said treatments and a vaccine are still in development, and those will be needed to defeat COVID-19.

But Wolf said he is optimistic that Pennsylvanians are working together to keep everyone safe until those developments come to fruition.

“We can't isolate ourselves forever,” Wolf said. “We need to continue to be careful; that's the point.”