Local Health Director, ER Doctor Urge Bucks Countians To Play It Safe Over Holidays

County and area health officials want residents to take pandemic safety seriously this holiday season, especially after the recent rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths within Bucks County.

At a recent press conference, Bucks County Health Department Dr. David Damsker told residents to celebrate Christmas, the New Year, and other upcoming holidays at home and without large gatherings.

Health officials at all levels have encouraged Americans to limit the size of their gatherings or don’t hold any at all during the holidays. They have noted that asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people could easily and unknowingly spread COVID-19.

“When your bringing in people outside your bubble, you’re increasing the risk,” Damsker said. “You’re going to get COVID, most likely, from people you know and not from the stranger in Giant.”

Damsker said many cases have been spread as residents have home gatherings and take their masks off and let down their guard with family and friends.

Dr. Gerald Wydro, chair of emergency medicine for Jefferson Health’s Bucks County and Northeast Philadelphia hospitals, said a holiday gathering just isn’t worth the risk of getting sick or getting someone else sick.

“The bottom line is that the risk we all run is that one person has COVID, we don’t know they have it, and it gets spread through a large event, especially when a large family gathering happens,” he said.

Wydro said he is aware of a family ravaged by COVID-19. He explained that two of the five family members died and two more were in the hospital with one hooked up to a ventilator.

“I can tell you the stories of a multitude of grandparents who have died here by themselves because their families couldn’t come in,” he added. “Those aren’t stories meant to scare; they’re to educate.”

“The best thing we can do for one another is to not spend time together,” Bucks County Commissioners Chairperson Diane Ellis-Marseglia said. “This is a year that we are going to be telling children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren about, and we should be able to point to what we did to make this a little bit easier for the doctors and the nurses, as well as for our neighbors.”

---

---

Bob Harvie, the vice chairperson of the Bucks County Commissioners, said his family’s tradition of a large, traditional Christmas gathering is off the table. He said it will resume hopefully next year, but it’s worth skipping one year to keep everyone healthy.

“It’s certainly going to be a much different Christmas,” Harvie said. “Hopefully, we can get through this and make next Christmas better.”

While houses of worship weren’t included in the governor’s recent mitigation order, Damsker warned people attending church services to physical distance and wear masks when at events with others.

“COVID doesn’t really distinguish between a church service and a Phillies game,” Damsker told reporters. “While there is religious freedom in this country, COVID doesn’t distinguish.”

Leading up to Thanksgiving, Bucks County was already seeing a surge of COVID-19 cases, but that surge grew even larger after the holiday.

Medical experts believe the nationwide spike in case and deaths following Thanksgiving was due, at least in part, to travel and gatherings. In some parts of the country and even in more rural areas of Pennsylvania, the strain has endangered hospitals ability to care for patients.

“The surge didn’t start with Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving made the surge worse,” Damsker said.

“We saw a huge bump after Thanksgiving. It just went up very, very rapidly,” Wydro said.

For Wydro, who also serves as medical director for the Penndel-Middletown Emergency Squad, he fears the days and weeks after the holidays could see more spikes in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to gatherings.

“We saw a bump after Thanksgiving,” Wydro said. “We really need to avoid that after Christmas and New Years.”

Report a correction via email | Editorial standards and policies

---

---