Sep. 28, 2020
HARRISBURG – Seeking answers to Gov. Tom Wolf’s policy of allowing patients who tested positive to COVID-19 to be allowed to return to long-term care facilities, many of which were hotbeds of the virus, Rep. Seth Grove (R-Dover) filed a Right-to-Know (RTK) request with Wolf’s Department of Health.
“At about the same time the Wolf administration ordered nursing homes to admit COVID-19-positive patients, he was also letting criminals out of prisons to, as he claimed, stave off outbreaks,” Grove said. “In reality, the governor was putting the wolf in the hen house where it ran rampant and killed thousands of elderly Pennsylvanians. How could the governor in one breath say prisoners aren’t safe from COVID-19 but the elderly, who are known to be more susceptible to the virus, are able to live in close quarters to someone who is known to have it?”
At the time of Grove’s RTK filing with the Department of Health on Friday, nearly 5,500 elderly Pennsylvanians, including 87 York Countians, who reside in long-term care facilities have died of the virus. Specifically, Grove’s request seeks the public health data and models to support the order requiring long-term care facilities to accept COVID-19-positive patients into the facilities.
The RTK is part of 30 requests filed with the administration to seek public health data and models used to develop the governor’s policy on COVID-19. Grove has had to take the unusual route of filing RTKs after not receiving full, or at times any, answers to his questions.
In recent months, Grove championed legislation, which became law as
Act 77 of 2020 to ensure the public has the exact reasons and data on why decisions are being made during emergency declarations.
Representative Seth Grove
196th District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Greg Gross
717.260.6374
ggross@pahousegop.com
RepGrove.com /
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