The Pennsylvania House of Representatives worked last week on legislation that would allow certain businesses to reopen, but Gov. Tom Wolf said Friday afternoon he wouldn’t support such a measure if it were not in the best interest of keeping people safe.

The House Appropriations Committee last Tuesday, in a party-line vote, approved legislation that would allow businesses conforming with a federal list of essential critical infrastructure to open their doors.

“Our goal should be to get through this as quickly as we can, and every time we talk about opening something up, we’re prolonging this phase,” Wolf said to reports during a conference call. “It isn’t good for businesses if employees don’t feel safe coming to work.”

House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler, R-Montgomery County, said the bill would bring more consistency to which businesses can be open and which can’t during the COVID-19 pandemic. He used the example of big box stores being able to stay open, while smaller businesses, many of which sell the same types of products, were forced to close.

“I think if we are going to err, we should err on the side of keeping our foot on the brakes,” Wolf said. “Other states are now coming around to our way of thinking when it comes to keeping businesses closed. The General Assembly is frustrated, as we all are, but we’re trying to keep people safe.”

Earlier Friday, Wolf issued an executive order to authorize the early release of up to 1,800 inmates from Pennsylvania state prisons in an effort to minimize the spread of the virus.

“We’re working closely with law enforcement and district attorneys to make this as safe as possible,” Wolf said. “We’re trying to make sure the prison population is not overloaded at a time when those facilities can become a petri dish for this virus. For those inmates with time left to serve, they will do that when this period of the epidemic is over.”

The governor has also authorized the creation of a $450 million emergency loan program for the state’s hospitals to help them avoid bankruptcy during the COVID-19 crisis. The move came after frequent discussions with hospital officials about their concerns.

“When we asked them to stop doing elective surgeries, that puts a financial hurt on any health care system,” Wolf said. “The federal stimulus package has $100 billion in it for health care, but that isn’t coming for a few weeks. Some of these small, rural hospitals are on pretty thin ice and we thought it was the right thing to help them out.”

Wolf said during Friday’s call he urges everyone to continue distancing themselves from other people, no matter the circumstance.

“It was true when we started this and it’s still true today,” he said of social distancing requirements. “We expect the surge to come next week, and if it is within the capacity that our health care systems can handle, we can shut this down pretty quick. But we’re all responsible to each other. We all need to stay home.”

Pennsylvania reopened state-owned liquor stores for online sales, but the demand has bogged down the system.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board then said in a statement that access to the website will be randomized to avoid overwhelming the site with high traffic.

“We thought shutting down the liquor stores was the appropriate thing to do, but the drug and alcohol department let us know pretty quickly they didn’t think it was smart,” Wolf said. “So we tried to make the online system robust enough to deal with the demand, but it didn’t work well because it was just overloaded. We’re going to continue to try to get this right because we haven’t as of yet.”