HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Wolf administration said Tuesday it has no plans to pursue another COVID-19 emergency declaration, or attempt new statewide mitigation measures or vaccine mandates, as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads quickly and overloads Pennsylvania’s hospitals.

“We are not considering further mitigation at this time,” Acting Secretary of Health Keara Klinepeter said at a news conference. Instead, she said, the Health Department is pushing more residents to get vaccinated and taking steps to support hospitals hit by severe staffing shortages and a wave of COVID-19 patients.

Gov. Tom Wolf, appearing on KDKA-AM radio in Pittsburgh, reiterated that vaccines are his administration’s strategy for fighting the spread of COVID-19.

“We can can live lives a lot more freely than we could before and we don’t have to make the same harsh decisions we did two years ago. So we’re in a different place,” Wolf said.

At the start of the pandemic nearly two years ago, Wolf ordered schools to shut down for in-person instruction, issued a broad stay-at-home order, closed businesses deemed “non-life-sustaining” and ordered masks to be worn indoors and in public where social distancing was impossible.

However, Wolf has since seen that authority crimped amid pushback from Republican lawmakers.

Voters handed more authority over emergency disaster declarations to the General Assembly, and the state Supreme Court ended Wolf’s masking order in schools and child care centers, saying it lacked legal justification after the Republican-controlled Legislature voted in June to terminate Wolf’s COVID-19 emergency disaster declaration.

“I think certainly the constitutional authorities that the governor and that the secretary of health have are different at this time, and we’ve certainly heard people’s perspective that they would like to be able to make local decisions,” Klinepeter said Tuesday.

“And so that’s really what we’re leaning on, is for people in local places of authority to make good public health decisions.”

The Health Department expects new cases to peak in January, followed by a peak in hospitalizations in February and a peak in deaths in late February to early March.

Hospitals and nursing homes hit by severe staffing shortages have been sounding the alarm as largely unvaccinated COVID-19 patients fill hospital beds. The Wolf administration said it is working to bring health care workers from out of state to help.

Statewide, more than 7,100 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, a pandemic record.