Thurston County Health Officer: COVID 19 Letter to the Community

178 Shares

Submitted by Thurston County

Letter to the community

June 9, 2020

I have had a great mix of emotions the last two weeks. I was so excited to finally get our phase 2 application to the Secretary of Health and having our county open to some more activities.  What I did not anticipate was that we would have the first, long-term care facility outbreak of COVID-19.

How are we doing? Many of you are worried that we might “revert” back to phase 1 or not be able to apply to move forward on our road to recovery. Reverting to phase 1 is unlikely. Right now, we are preparing the information we need to apply to move to phase three and working with the commissioners to develop a timeline for approvals. We are eligible to apply on June 17. A key part of our being allowed to move through the phases is our community’s ability to respond to a surge rise in cases of COVID. We do have the capacity. Our public health system can investigate and control transmission of disease in a timely manner. Our hospitals have the capacity to care for sicker patients. Our medical community continues to do testing. We need to be able to protect our vulnerable older adults and have no more than one long-term care outbreak in the two weeks before our application for phase 3. The two outbreaks in long-term care facilities in our community were identified on 5/26 and 5/27. The total number of cases is important but is not the only metric involved. The target for us is to have less than 74 cases in the 14 days prior to application for phase 3. This is where we need the rest of our community to help.

What can citizens do to keep us moving forward? I have been sharing the same messages for the past three months. Physical distancing is very important. At least 6 feet away, so in case someone is coughing or sneezing or spreading the virus, it will not reach you. Washing your hands properly (or use hand sanitizer), especially before you touch your face, protects you from accidentally introducing the virus into your eyes or nose. Staying home when you are sick helps to prevent exposing others. Using a face covering prevents you from spreading the virus in case you are just starting to come down with the disease.

Can asymptomatic cases spread the disease? The information about this has been changing as we learn more about the new disease. We do know that a person can have COVID without having symptoms at all. A person can have COVID and have very mild or non-specific symptoms and dismiss them. A person can just be coming down with COVID but has not yet developed symptoms (pre-symptomatic).

Our definition of a case for COVID is someone who has a viral test showing they have COVID in their nose. If they have no symptoms, we consider their contacts beginning two days before the test was done, until ten days after. If they have symptoms, we consider who their contacts are from two days before symptom onset. Close contacts are persons you spend time with (at least 15 minutes) within 6 feet or are members of your household. Household contacts are generally exposed before the cases know they are sick. We do know you can transmit disease when you are pre-symptomatic.

Update on the outbreak in the long-term care facilities. We had two outbreaks identified. The first one was in a large facility caring for assisted living and independent living clients. The second was in a small adult family home. The investigations for both facilities are ongoing. So far there have been 30 individuals identified with COVID as part of this outbreak, four staff members are not Thurston residents, so they do not count toward our numbers. A total of 23 are from the larger facility, 13 staff and 10 residents. Four of the residents were hospitalized, one has passed away. An additional five individuals who are close or household contacts of these cases have also been identified. The smaller adult family home had a resident and two staff members test positive. One staff also worked at the other facility. A second round of testing was conducted on 6/8 as part of this investigation, results are pending. All cases and contacts are monitored daily and are on isolation and household members are on quarantine.

Long-term care facility testing. Over the next two weeks, the State Secretary of Health ordered all long-term care facilities to do baseline COVID testing of all their staff and residents. This was planned and not connected to our outbreak investigation. We will likely see a few more cases from this effort and hopefully identify cases early and prevent future outbreaks.

As we move through the phases and bring some normalcy back into our lives, it is important to continue to be diligent about protecting ourselves and the rest of our community.  BLACK LIVES MATTER and COVID are public health issues we all need to be aware of. Please try to protect yourself while attending protest rallies. Maintaining physical distance when in a large crowd is important. Making sure you do not touch your face without first sanitizing your hands. Wear a face covering to protect others. Please do not attend these rallies if you are ill. Please be safe. Thank you for taking care of our community.

Diana T. Yu, MD, MSPH

Acting Health Officer, Thurston County

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
178 Shares