NSPR’s Marc Albert checked in with Lassen County recently about a decision last week to backpedal reopening after the county – which for months had zero confirmed cases of COVID-19 – had five residents test positive in a relatively short time.
The temporary return to the county’s first phase was going to last seven days, but in just a couple, the county pivoted again, returning to Phase 2.
To learn more, Marc spoke with Barbara Longo, Lassen County’s director of Health and Social Services. Here are highlights from their conversation. You can also listen at the top of the page.
On how the business community reacted to the initial phase rollback.
We were disheartened — very much so. We did talk to them, they had staffed up, they bought all their supplies and resources and items and inventory. And so it was a very difficult decision. But we had to think about the safety of all. We just needed to figure out what was going on. And why were people taking this so lackadaisical? And so we've thought that, hey, we've been zero cases for three months, people just maybe didn't think it was really a serious issue. We made the decision, [Public Health Officer] Dr. [Kenneth] Korver looked at all the information and we talked this through and he said, I got to close it down because I need to see what's going on. I need to be able to manage this. And that's exactly what you do with data. You evaluate it and you have to make the best decision you have at that time.
So I said we're going to close it for a week. Contacted individuals, and it turns out we put about 60 people on quarantine. After looking at that after a couple days and we were able to contain it all the tests were coming back negative, which was a good thing for all those people that we had put in quarantine, with the exception of those five positive people. And so we knew our next steps were to monitor them, check back with them every day to see if they're experiencing symptoms, and then we were retesting them.
So right now they're still in quarantine. We're still talking with them, seeing what needs they might have because they are home quarantined. And we're meeting their needs as best we can. And so it's a difficult situation for them, but they have been cooperative. After the first test came back negative, it appeared we were able to isolate or contain those individuals that had close contact with the individuals that first tested positive. Dr. Kovar, again, looked at all the information and made the decision that because everybody now has been so cooperative that he wanted to reopen. And again, he said it would be seven days or until further notice. So I think we're following what we're supposed to do in terms of a pandemic. We're following our plan. We're jumping on things as quickly as possible and we're making a determination based on the information we have, and that is in the best interest of the public,
On what would happen in the event of another spike in cases
What we've seen from this first case that we had — we have a real good, staffed up contact tracing investigation team. And that was something that we weren't quite sure how many people we needed. At first the state said that a county of our size, we would need one trained person. We trained six. We saw that we needed more, so we trained up a few more people. We have a total of 11 or 12 at this time, and that works. So if we do see some more cases come in, we will go ahead and use our contact tracing investigation team and we believe we can really jump on it and isolate those cases.
If it turns out that it's widespread, and it's just all over the place, we'll have to make that determination and decision with the information we have at this point. That's not our plan or strategy to close down every time we have a case or a surge. Now our plan says that we're also going to be taking into consideration hospitalization, bed utilization, and in this case, nobody was hospitalized, people had mild to no symptoms.
On drive-thru surveillance testing conducted in May
I'm so glad you asked that because there are a couple of things I want to talk about that particular activity that we undertook. And one yes, we are considered a testing desert, meaning we do not have a lab within an hour of our county. So every single test that we conduct, we have to go and send it to an outside lab.
So we asked to have a testing center in Lassen County, and they said rather, we'll go ahead and give you some test kits and will assist you in having those test specimens tested quickly. And so we had a contract — it was a kind of a three-way contract with the state and a lab and UCSF. So we entered into that.
And we had our drive-thru — very similar to what we have when we have a drive-thru flu clinic. And we had it at the college. We had probably around and again, I'm sorry, I don't have these numbers, but it is on our website. It's around, I want to say 600 or 700 people we tested. And we did open it up for a third day to have extended hours because we were hearing that some people worked and they still wanted to get tested. And by the time they could get to the testing center, it would have been too late. So we opened it up to 7 p.m. in the evening on that Wednesday.
So far every single test that we've conducted through that surveillance testing activity have all come up negative. So people are saying oh, you open up this baseline testing and now we have found positive cases — totally separate. The positive cases came from somebody going to their health care provider and getting tested based on the recommendation of their physician.
On the value of surveillance testing
I think it's really important that we understand what's happening in Lassen County in our region. And so this test, one, it gives people maybe a sense of security in one way, knowing that they don't have COVID if it tests negative. And it also helps us to pinpoint the areas of Lassen County that have had people tested and are negative, so we can kind of look at that map. And if somebody does become positive, we can kind of overlay that with the areas that we've tested to see what it looks like. So again, it's giving us a sense of what's happening in Lassen County.
Because again, we were zero cases for three months. And so there was some thought that maybe we might have the immunity here and we have not done serology testing yet, with the general population. There has been one group that did do serology testing. And again, that's the blood test to see if you have the antibodies in your system. There was one person, I believe, that tested positive to have the antibodies, and everybody else was negative. So we're getting all the information, all the data, and we'll be analyzing that and perhaps even looking at having some epidemiologist take a look at our numbers to kind of help us out in evaluating what this all means. But we have to have the numbers to be able to make that next leap into assessing it, evaluating it and making some kind of conclusions based on data.
On whether state data on testing in Lassen County includes testing at the prison
My understanding, it's the general population. Prisons are testing. I do believe that they are going to keep those separate. However, I have not had that confirmed. And I say that because it goes through the state testing system. And a lot of the inmates are not Lassen County residents. They're living in Lassen County, obviously in congregated living in the prison. They're from other counties. So it's going to depend on when they came to the prison and where they came from, if they happen to test positive, but again, the prison has done a really remarkable job at quarantining people and testing inmates before they're integrated with the larger inmate population.
On what can residents do to help the county move forward and not have to roll things back and restore restrictions
If for the next few weeks to the next couple months, if they could just be aware of their surroundings, i.e., how close are they with people. Social distancing is the key right now. Keeping their hands clean and not sharing, like glasses — somebody will have a bottle water and share it with someone else. You know, don't do that right now. Sharing their beverages with somebody, it's just not the time to do that.
We want to continue to move forward. We want to continue to have things open up, and one of the big things are the gatherings. It's really hard. Right now it's graduation time, and they're just clamoring to have in person graduation. And we just can't do that right now.
We've talked about gradually increasing what you'll see with the churches, they're going to start opening up and they're going to be at, you know, 25% capacity and kind of working with that to see how does that work and then step it up to maybe you know, the next level, what is that, 50%, 75%, 100%? We have to just phase into this.
So people need to be patient and understanding, and I'm just asking that folks all pull together like they have. The businesses in Lassen County have been great. Even though we've asked them to modify their business model, they've been doing a really good job. While it hurts them, they understand the importance of this. So just asking for understanding and let's get through this and lift each other up when we can open up and support those businesses locally.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the “play” button to listen to the entire interview.
