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This afternoon, Dr Teresa Frankovich, Humboldt County Health Officer, answered a number of media questions about the state of the pandemic – particularly about the state’s recent reclassification of Humboldt into the “red” state level, the second highest.
Also discussed: What led to the local increase in the number of cases, the reopening of schools, the current impact on our health system and when a new health worker will be hired. (Dr Frankovich retired from his post in the county two months ago, but has stayed until another person can be found.)
Video above, approximate transcript below.
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The Times-Standard asks, “Are there any instances related to gatherings during Halloween or Election Day activities?”
I would say that I am aware of some cases related to Halloween gatherings, I don’t know of any particularly related to Election Day gatherings.
The Times-Standard asks, “When you spoke with the school superintendents, what advice was offered regarding in-person classes for the schools that offer them?”
Well, we are supporting schools that maintain their current operations. Being in the red level doesn’t mean schools need to change or switch to distance education in any way, even schools that are open now, if we went purple, could stay that way. The only difference is that the schools that are not yet open, if they, if we go to the purple level, will not be able to open until we leave the purple level.
The Times-Standard asks, “During the supervisors meeting there was a discussion about the possibility of going purple at some point. What kind of lead time would affected companies receive for this change? ”
It’s a good question. All I can say is we’re continually monitoring our data so we’re starting to get a feel for what that might look like at the end of a week, for example. The problem we face is that we can never be entirely sure, because until the last moment additional labs can enter the state’s reporting system.
So we usually have a pretty good guess and we will definitely send a message to that effect as we realize it, but for now it is evident that the State with the heightened urgency of the situation is not. not long to prepare for the closing once it is announced. , and so we recognize that you know this is a challenge for affected businesses and we will just try to keep up to date as much as possible.
The Times-Standard asks: “Demographically, are young people currently responsible for the number of cases?”
Absolutely. It is very clear that approximately 75 percent of our cases involve people under the age of 50. I would tell you that many of our more recent cases involve a population under the age of 40. And so it comes back to the question of both: it’s young the workforce that can be exposed to many exhibitions through extensive work with the public etc, but it’s also because you know that young people probably tend to go out a little more than me at 60 and so on and I envy younger, healthy people probably feeling somewhat invulnerable to that.
And I just want to stress again that no matter what age, anyone can get infected. Some people will be more affected by the disease than others, but we also know that people even at a young age can become seriously ill and have died from COVID, so it helps everyone to be careful in their behavior, to protect themselves and to protect everyone. in their community.
The Redheaded Blackbelt asks, “Can you clarify if public gatherings have contributed to the recent surge in local cases or if the vast majority are individual friends and family groups getting together and traveling?”
Honestly, I am not aware of any large scale event that has been identified as a source of multiple infections.
I would tell you that we have learned a lot about COVID. There is still a lot to do, but one thing we do know is that outdoor gatherings, even large gatherings, don’t seem to result in a lot of cases and so if people are in a group you know the setting. outside, even when we are talking about three households able to come together, to be outside, much safer than to be inside. And in the same way, if you are able to eat outside rather than inside in a mixed group, this is extremely useful, because of course you are not going to be masked.
These indoor activities are the most common cause of infections and we just need to be very careful about them.
The Lost Coast outpost asks, “Today at the Oversight Board meeting, Director of Public Health Michele Stephens mentioned that this is the last time you will brief the board. Why is that? Has a new health worker been hired? ”
I think she said it may be the last time. But I think the county is in the process of hiring, so hopefully a new health worker will be in place soon.
There was a bit of confusion on this point, but I announced that I was resigning my post I think at the beginning of September, but I also said that I was going to stay on until I was ‘a replacement be found if possible and so I really wanted to ensure that continuity in the process rather than having an interim health worker, so I hope the new health worker will be on board soon and that person will refer of course to the board.
The North Coast News asks, “What are the theories / sciences as to why we are seeing such an increase in cases statewide and nationwide, what has changed in behaviors / attitudes and circumstances? ”
Well, I think the two big factors in this are that the first people experience what has been called COVID fatigue. People are just tired of it, and I fully understand that – we all want normalcy, we want to get back to normal, we want this to be over, and I think to some extent sometimes people claim that this is the case and are simply behaving as they normally would have before COVID.
And so I think what’s going on is it’s hard to continue all the preventative measures that we talked about and limit social activities and things – I get it – but we have to do that in the future. .
The other problem we face is the change of weather. We have moved from a time when people could be outdoors most of the time to now where they are indoors because of the colder temperatures, especially in parts of the country, and also in Humboldt, the things like rain and you know even sitting outside. at night it’s a lot colder right now so it drives a lot of activity indoors. And as I mentioned before, this is a very big risk factor.
The North Coast News asks, “You’ve already mentioned that counties have the discretion to increase restrictions beyond what’s put in place by the state assigned level. Does Humboldt plan to tighten restrictions locally beyond what red level requires in order to handle cases? ”
No. I think going from yellow and not having the intermediate step to orange, taking us straight to red, is a good decision. I think we needed this big change in what we do and I hope that with the people who take note of the situation and really try to improve their preventive measures, it will help to curb what is happening. I don’t think we are going unilaterally to a purple level that is not justified by our measures.
But you know we’re continually looking at, as I said, the data. If we become aware of some disturbing trends before the state even realizes it, we will certainly have this conversation. But for now, I have high hopes. I really think that with, you know – since a lot of our cases are still motivated by travel and gatherings, we’ve seen an increase in community transmission, but not so dramatic that we can’t get away with it. We can get out of it if people just respect the non-gathering and really try not to travel, especially in terms of high risk travel and by that I mean, you know, travel and visit, stay with it. friends. and the family, being in households together. Getting together in this way is particularly risky. Likewise, bringing family members here to do this is very risky.
Even though we are currently having issues with our case count, we are still in better shape than most other areas, so you can assume that if you leave Humboldt you will be in a place that has more COVID, your risk then. of any encounter will be higher and there is a greater chance that you will take it home with you. So I think we have the tools, I honestly think we could put the brakes on and maybe even come back, but it’s going to take a lot of joint effort across the community.
The North Coast News asks: “Last week Dr Ennis said cases were starting to overlap with local health workers. What is your main concern in the face of this new wave of cases? Is it the capacity of the hospital? Do healthcare workers contract it?
Well, obviously there are a lot of concerns going forward. More immediately, I want the cases to come up to a number that can still allow for a very good, solid case investigation, as I think that’s what has helped contain the spread in our communities so far. We cannot add staff indefinitely for a large number of cases, at one point it is no longer efficient. And so we really need to be able to stem the rate of the increase so that we can continue to do some really good investigations.
Obviously the end game on this is to prevent both serious illnesses requiring hospitalization and people who die with COVID, both from COVID itself and people who die from other things like heart attacks. , strokes, car accidents because they can’t get hospital treatment because the hospital is serving COVID and full of these patients, so yeah, the end of the game here is trying to protect the ability of our health care system with an overwhelming outbreak of cases that really compromises care for everyone and therefore it is especially important to respect all the things we talked about.
I also want to point out that along the way you know that we have an impact on our business community and that it has an impact for all of us living here. So you know that maintaining and being able to move to a less restrictive level is definitely beneficial to us.
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