Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration talked about disparity in health care at a Thursday news conference.

“Equality is a central issue,” Wolf said.

In April, Wolf tasked Lt. Gov. John Fetterman with the creation of a COVID-19 Response Task Force for Health Disparity to help communicate issues about how the pandemic is affecting the state's minority and marginalized populations.

Fetterman released the task force's report Thursday that included 57 specific policy recommendations that span six focal topics, including housing, criminal justice, food insecurity, health disparity, education and economic opportunities.

“Whatever existed before the pandemic has been amplified by COVID-19,” he said.

Fetterman said one of multiple reasons people of color have been disproportionately affected by the virus is because they have high involvement in front-line employment.

“They work at the grocery stores. They work at the post office. They work on the front line, and they are disproportionately representative of that,” Fetterman said. “And they live in neighborhoods that are much less likely to have access to proximate health care.”

Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said as a member of the health workforce, she has seen firsthand the disparity that exists. She said the disparity of health care is yet another reason for people to follow COVID-19 mitigation practices.

“Our actions as a community can lessen the impact COVID-19 has on our fellow Pennsylvanians most at risk,” she said.

In Thursday's report by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Butler County's numbers again increased, including an additional 12 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Butler County's confirmed case count is 649, which represents the total since the beginning of the pandemic. Sixteen Butler County residents have died due to complications from the virus.

The county added 31 cases over the past two days, but a widely publicized delay in testing results could be to blame.

Also missing from Thursday's report as well as from previous reports were county breakdowns on demographic data.

In the spring, Levine ordered that race, ethnicity and other variables should be added to data reports by hospitals. She said about 60 percent of new reports have the proper degree of information.

“Since that time, we have made progress, but not enough progress,” Levine said. “We all need to work together, and (the hospitals) need to do a better job.”