The Pennsylvania Department of Health will soon begin releasing more pointed data to county emergency management officials, the secretary of health said during the daily COVID-19 press briefing on Thursday.

Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine responded to a question about the issue of not releasing locations to local emergency management officials to help better prepare first responders when responding to an emergency and to allow county officials to know where local hot spots are within each county.

Levine said that the more detailed county releases will be sent to county emergency management officials hopefully by the end of the week.

The information will not be released to the public.

Prior to this announcement, the Department of Health had only been releasing county-level data about confirmed COVID-19 cases, but left officials wondering where specific locations were.

The Carbon County Commissioners have been very vocal about the need for getting the more detailed information and asked state Rep. Doyle Heffley and Sen. John Yudichak for help with urging the state to release this information so that they can better protect first responders.

On Thursday morning, the board again spoke about the need for this information.

On Friday, Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said Levine’s announcement was a good thing.

“At least we can track the hot spots now,” he said, “and we can alert our responders if we know where the positive cases are. We don’t have to know the names, just the locations.”

Earlier this week, Heffley sent a second request to Levine asking for more details reporting of the case numbers after he and Yudichak’s first request in March went unanswered.

“I applaud the Department of Health and Secretary Dr. Levine for listening to the concerns of both first responders and county leaders who have called for better local reporting of COVID-19 data. With this information in hand, our first responders and emergency personnel can now be better prepared to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves and others if called to the home of a person that may have contracted COVID-19,” Yudichak said in a statement Friday. “During this challenging time, we are depending heavily on our first responders, and we must make sure that everything is being done to keep them safe and healthy.”

Heffley said Friday afternoon he still has not received official notice from Levine’s office regarding the additional information request and her announcement but said it would greatly help officials with knowing where cases are located.

“The information is very important to control the spread of the coronavirus,” Heffley said.

He noted that there are some hot spots around Carbon County, particularly areas that border other counties, but added that there is at least one case in every municipality in Carbon.

“People need to know there are cases throughout Carbon County,” Heffley said. “Continue to practice social distancing and stay at home as much as possible. We need to isolate this thing.

“We’re handling it well in our hospitals, but we need to continue to socially isolate for the next two weeks so that the numbers don’t jump. Don’t let your guard down now.”

Some counties and cities have been able to release the location information about specific cases within that county already because they have local health departments. These counties include Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Erie, Montgomery and Philadelphia, as well as the cities of Bethlehem, Wilkes-Barre, Erie and York.

Previously, the Pennsylvania Department of Health said that releasing more specific information would compromise privacy.