“You are seeing what could be the beginning of what we’ve been seeing in Texas and Arizona,” said Dr. Bill Miller, a professor of epidemiology at the Ohio State University. He described upswings in urban counties in Ohio, a state that saw weeks of steady or declining cases but is now averaging more than 1,000 new confirmed cases a day, the worst so far of the pandemic.
“We can’t let our guard down,” he said.
For months, Pittsburgh had been both diligent and lucky.
The virus began spreading here later than in some early centers of the nation’s crisis, like New York City or Detroit. That gave Pittsburgh time to prepare. At the same time, Pennsylvania, which began facing skyrocketing rates in the eastern half of the state, took a more aggressive approach to shutting down public life than sta...