Gov. Tom Wolf’s office says he was tested for coronavirus, then backtracks and says he wasn’t

“The information we provided to you was an error,” Mike Brunelle, Wolf’s chief of staff, said in an apology to Spotlight PA.

• Angela Couloumbis/Spotlight PA
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  Angela Couloumbis has covered government, politics, courts and crime for The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996. She has reported on forest fires in the Rocky Mountains, riots in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati, the mob’s effort to infiltrate city hall in New Jersey’s poorest city and the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.
  
  For the past 13 years, she has focused on government and politics in the Pennsylvania State Capitol, shedding light on backroom dealing and corruption. She was part of a two-member reporting team that, in 2014, exposed a secret effort by the state Attorney General’s office to shut down an investigation into lawmakers who accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from an undercover government informant. The reporting led to a series of resignations and criminal convictions over several years. She has spent the past 18 months focused on investigative reporting on the #metoo movement in Pennsylvania. Her coverage has included projects on secret, taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlements in the Legislature and state government.

 Commonwealth Media Services

Gov. Tom Wolf, who is currently working remotely, recently tested negative for the coronavirus after a potential exposure.

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PennLive/Patriot-News.

HARRISBURG — Just hours after saying Gov. Tom Wolf had tested negative for the coronavirus out of concern he had been exposed, the governor’s office inexplicably backtracked Monday and said he had in fact not received a test.

“The information we provided to you was an error,” Mike Brunelle, Wolf’s chief of staff, said in an apology to Spotlight PA.

Brunelle did not explain how the error happened.

In its initial response, Wolf’s office explained that the governor’s office was contacted by a person who had feared exposure and said they had been near Wolf. As a result, the office said, Wolf was tested and was confirmed to be negative.

But in its reversal, Brunelle said enough time had elapsed between when Wolf may have been exposed to the person; and because the governor was showing no symptoms, he decided to forgo a test.

The governor is working remotely but is not in quarantine. The same applies to his cabinet secretaries and executive and management staff.

Wolf has in the past week been conducting briefings separately from Health Secretary Rachel Levine, who has been providing updates from the state’s emergency management headquarters outside Harrisburg. His public schedule, which is posted on his government website, has not been updated since March 5, the day before Wolf declared a disaster emergency as the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Pennsylvania.

That week, his schedule shows, the governor was in Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Monroe Counties — areas that reported some of the earliest cases of the virus.

Most of the state’s six legislative leaders, some of whom are scheduled to be in the Capitol this week, said they are not exhibiting any symptoms and had not been tested.

One — House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster) — said he did not want to share any medical information about himself. Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) did not respond to questions.

Though testing for COVID-19 has increased in the past week — with hospitals, health systems, and private labs either taking samples, administering tests, or both — mass testing is not widely available.

Levine has urged people who are asymptomatic or who have mild symptoms to stay home and reach out to a doctor if needed. She said testing is being prioritized for people who are exhibiting severe symptoms, have an underlying health condition, are elderly, or are health care workers.

A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.

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