Butler County Commissioners kept COVID-19 in mind Tuesday, the same day state officials called for expanding testing across the state.

According to a news release Thursday, the Butler County Board of Commissioners approved the replacement of public restroom faucets to address sanitization concerns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Commissioner Leslie Osche, board chairwoman, pointed out the expense is covered under the U.S. Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

“This is part of CARES Act funding to make the buildings safer,” said Osche in the release.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health's report Thursday, Butler County added 12 confirmed cases. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the county has a total of 585 confirmed cases and 15 deaths due to COVID-19.

Also Thursday at the state level, Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine updated the public on testing expansion at a news conference.

“Identifying carriers of COVID-19 is a really important part of eliminating this spread,” Wolf said.

He said the state has come a long way in testing capacity. He said in April, the state only tested about 8,000 patients per day.

“We're now averaging around 22,000 tests daily,” Wolf said.

State officials estimated about 4 percent of Pennsylvania's population was tested last month.

“We'd like to go higher. We'd like to go to more than 5 percent per month,” Levine said.

Levine attributed some of the boost to its partnerships with commercial businesses, such as Walmart and Rite Aid.

Jamie Reilly, regional health and wellness director of operations for Walmart, said his company continues to answer the call and its proximity to many communities has helped.

“Ninety percent of the population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart,” said Reilly.

Cranberry Township's Walmart Supercenter Pharmacy began drive-through testing Wednesday with pharmacists guiding and supervising people who performed nasal swabs on themselves.

Walmart, like many businesses doing drive-through testing, has partnered with a national lab in Quest Diagnostics. The national lab will process the tests and communicate the results, but national labs have recently been called into question for wait times.

“We go by the average of seven days, but give-and-take based on the demand and outbreaks in given areas geographically, it can take up to 14 days for turnaround for results,” Reilly said.

Levine said the state's own labs continue to operate smoothly, but she has talked with representatives from the national labs as well as the federal government about the delays. She said they have promised to further expand testing capacity for those facilities.

“Fourteen days, that's too long,” Levine said. “It's clearly too long.”