KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — Kalamazoo County health officials provided an update to the state of the COVID-19 spread in the area.
During a virtual meeting Tuesday night, county health officials James Rutherford and William Nettleton spoke with the board at length on what has been discovered.
— Increased Testing Capacity —
“We’re working in unison with the Family Health Center,” Rutherford said. “Last week, they were able to collect about 114 samples, of which about 20% of those came back as positive. This week, they’ve got another site set up, they’re poised to do about 300 samples at Loy Norrix High School this Thursday…We’re being as diligent and mindful as possible to try to get as many sites available and to try to get as many people sampled over the course of the next two to three weeks.”
— Increased Cases —
“We’ve said from the beginning that we know there’s a lot more positive cases in Kalamazoo County, we just haven’t had the capability of being able to identify those,” Rutherford said. “Again, that’s because we haven’t had the sampling capacity or the laboratory capacity. We’re fortunate, it’s a little late, but it’s here now and we’re taking full advantage of that.”
Because of the increased testing capability, officials are now able to perform “contact tracing” more effectively.
“It really is our communicable disease staff working diligently, almost around the clock, to trace some of the contacts and make sure we’re diligent about mitigating as much exposure as possible,” Rutherford said. “While this is very arduous for us, it’s helping to give us some good characterization of the significance of COVID-positive individuals that we haven’t been able to identify. We’re gonna see our rates go up, and that’s a direct result of sampling going on over the next couple weeks.”
— Vulnerable Populations —
“We’ve known from the beginning that our elderly and homeless populations are extremely vulnerable,” Rutherford said. “We’re working very closely with all of our facilities, but some of them are more challenging than others in terms of resources, PPE, and their environment.”
“The homeless population, that’s not a surprise, and now that the testing is taking place, we’re starting to identify that we’ve got some positive cases and there’s need for sampling within our shelters,” Rutherford added. “We work every day, ever hour with representatives from our homeless shelters.”
— Reopening Economy —
“We’re still trying to get a good representation of the amount of infection we have in Kalamazoo County,” Rutherford said. “We’re seeing a lot of different plan versions, but the reality is our Governor is the one that put forth all the restrictions, so that being said, we’re tied into that. We’re tied into when she begins to lift those restrictions. Hopefully its done in an incremental manner so we can gauge this over time. We follow closely with our partners at the state health department, so that’s part of our consideration as well.”
Rutherford added that there will be an increased need for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) once the economy reopens in part or in whole.
“There’s consequences to that, in terms of when we do start opening that up, there’s gonna be the need for additional PPE, so when we talk about hand-sewn masks and auxiliary types of equipment, that those are relatively available too. Ultimately, I don’t want to have to redo this or be doing this much later because we did this prematurely.”
— Data Updates —
William Nettleton then spoke about how the County is keeping citizens informed with provided data, beginning with the online data hub at https://www.kalcounty.com/hcs/covid19.php.
“We have the data hub on our website that demonstrates the number of cases, as well as demographics, which includes sex, age, race and those who have a confirmed laboratory test,” Nettleton said. “Also, a map of positive laboratory cases by region in our county as well.
The most informative piece of data on our website is our epidemiological curve, that’s the number of new confirmed cases based on when a person started to have symptoms or by when the health department was notified of that laboratory result.”
Data indicates that the virus appears more frequently in African-American individuals.
“It represents a health disparity that this disease is presenting in our community,” Nettleton said.
— Zip Codes —
Questions were raised as to why cases aren’t being shared by zip codes. Health officials have this information, but are not sharing it with the public at this time.
“It’s a false conclusion for folks to make if they are using a graphical representation to say, ‘I just won’t go to this part of the county or this zip code to avoid getting sick,’ that is a false conclusion,” Nettleton said. “We know that there is widespread community transmission throughout Kalamazoo County. Even if a zip code were to have zero cases or a low number, we know that transmission can occur.”
— Going Forward —
Citizens should continue to follow all guidelines from the County, State and CDC to help slow the spread of COVID-19. This includes frequent hand washing, minimizing travel as much as possible, wearing a face mask when in public, and practicing social distancing wherever possible.
