New CDC guidelines and school re-openings discussed at COVID-19 update

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new guidelines on asymptomatic testing and Montana State University Northern’s upcoming opening were topics of discussion at Friday’s COVID-19 update hosted by the Hill County Health Board.

Hill County Public Health Officer Jessica Sheehy said she is still looking through the new guidance put out by the CDC, which says that asymptomatic contacts for people who test positive may not need to be tested, as well as information recently provided by the National Institute of Health.

Sheehy said based on what she knows this new guidance seems to contradict her experience dealing with asymptomatic spread and, more importantly, the data on that spread, which she said indicates that people carrying the virus without having symptoms are capable of spreading it to many others if left unaddressed.

“I think research is showing there’s a lot of asymptomatic people out there, and that’s how we are getting community spread in other communities,” She said. “Thankfully, we’re not there yet, but my concern about not testing those contact and just having them out in the community is that it’s just going to perpetuate the problem.”

She said she’s advising that the testing of asymptomatic contacts continue until the CDC’s reasoning can be explained in a more data driven fashion.

“At this point, unless we see something different that is research based … my impression would be that we are going to continue to do contact tracing,” Sheehy said.

Erica McKeon-Hanson, who has taken the role of health officer for Northern, talked about some things the university is doing to prepare for the virus.

She said masks will be required on campus per Gov. Steve Bullock’s directive and social distancing will be a major focus of their re-opening efforts.

In a previous interview about the university’s re-opening, McKeon-Hanson said she’s confident in the measures that have been put in place at the college and said the school has been working closely with the health department to develop the most robust re-opening plan they possibly can while still maintaining in-person instruction.

She did say unknowns exist that likely can’t be anticipated, and they will be dealt with as time goes on.

McKeon-Hanson said one of the university’s goals is to take some of the burden off the health department as their institution opens up by doing as much prevention and response work as possible on their own and they have been working with the department to find out the best way to do that.

She said the university has access to funds allocated from the CARES Act by Bullock that can be used for hiring, logistics and testing, and that they are looking into using those funds to help ease the health departments burden and keep students and staff safe.

Sheehy said during the board of health meeting that, as far as school re-openings go, the health department is prepared for what’s to come, which will likely be more cases.

“We are preparing for cases and what that looks like,” she said. “You know when it comes to kindergarten through university, I think we’re about as prepared as we can be.”

Hill County Commissioner Mike Wendland asked the commission can do anything to help the department.

Hill County Public Health Director Kim Larson said the only thing they can really do is to stand behind the department’s decisions, particularly when it comes to school re-openings.

Larson said the individual plans for the schools in the county are different because there is so much variability between the schools themselves. She said a smaller school can, generally speaking, open up with much fewer restrictions because social distancing is much easier when compared to an entity like Havre Public Schools whose re-opening necessitates a more restrictive environment to be done in stages rather than all at once. She asked the commission to explain that reasoning if people come to them with concerns about the re-opening.

“It would be nice if you could have our back on that,” Larson said.

Sheehy said the county has seen an uptick in cases recently, but, for now, all of the cases have been travel-related or found through contact tracing and the county is not in the midst of an outbreak.

Wendland said there seems to be a rise in cases that affect people in the 0-9 age range, which he finds worrying.

“Obviously, that is a big concern,” he said.

Larson said this is true not just of Hill County, but of the state as well and said there will likely be more as schools continue to re-open.

She said, to some degree, the data on the virus is skewed because locations with lots of children, like schools, were shut down very early on in the pandemic, so there will be more data coming in on how the virus affects people in that age range.

Sheehy also provided a general update on how Hill County was doing as of Friday morning when it comes to COVID-19 and how testing is going statewide.

She said 1,396 tests have been conducted in Hill County, which now has 32 active cases seven pending tests and two deaths with 46 people considered to be recovered. There are no hospitalizations this week.

“We still don’t have community spread so that’s reassuring,” she said.

A Hill County Health Department update Sunday afternoon put the totals at 38 active cases, 46 recovered and two deaths.

Sheehy said the department still isn’t doing asymptomatic testing outside of contact tracing, but she said, the wait time on tests has been holding at 24 to 48 hours. She said she hasn’t received any updates on state-level asymptomatic testing since last week.

Sheehy said Montana reached 100 deaths as of Friday afternoon and the state has been seeing about 100 to 200 new cases per day.

The state update today listed 82 new cases confirmed Sunday and 104 deaths.

Hill County confirmed four new cases Friday and one new case Saturday and one Sunday.

Sheehy said Friday that the health department is still not recommended events with more than 50 attendees, but will continue to consult with people who do have events to make them as safe as possible.

She said employees of the health department have been working very long hours and the department is doing its best to make sure those extra hours are properly documented and rewarded.

Larson said the department is looking into using Sara Alert, an open-source tool for helping public health professionals conduct contact tracing, and she hopes it will help decrease workload for employees of the department.

The next COVID-19 update will be Friday at 1 p.m. and can be attended via GoToMeeting at https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/805108917 .