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A new COVID-19 web page gives a better snapshot of the disease in Del Norte and will soon be a hub for all information related to the pandemic, County Supervisor Gerry Hemmingsen announced Thursday.

Speaking at the latest community forum focusing on the novel coronavirus, Hemmingsen announced that the Del Norte County Office of Emergency Services and Information Technology Department will be migrating all local information related to the disease to the new web page. There will also be an email subscription service starting next week, he said.

“This data pulls directly from a data management system being used by the Public Health Department,” Hemmingsen said. “In the coming weeks, we’ll add more data and graphical enhancement to help better understand the data.”

Those participating in the forum also heard from Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin, Health and Human Services Director Heather Snow and Public Health Officer Dr. Warren Rehwaldt. The topics included the new community testing site at Del Norte High School; the need to wear masks; and reopening local businesses, in-person worship services and personal services such as hair salons.

Rehwaldt also touched on the most recent spike in cases, saying the “mini outbreak” was Del Norte County’s first real test.

“The first cases in March and April were so few, it represented the virus knocking at the door, basically, for the county,” he said. “This last group of clusters represented the first time we’ve seen virus transmission in a more meaningful way and a hint of what we should start to expect going forward.”

According to the new information hub, there are three active COVID-19 cases and 44 inactive cases, making a total of 47 confirmed patients in Del Norte County as of 4:31 p.m. Thursday. A total of 1,574 people have been tested in Del Norte County.

Del Norte County has not had new positive cases in the last two days, according to Snow.

The new information hub also includes an age breakdown of those who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. According to the web page, 24 percent of confirmed cases came from patients in the 0-17 year age range; 62 percent came from folks ages 18-49 years old; 10 percent came from those 50-64 years old; and 4 percent came from people who are 65 years old or older.

According to Rehwaldt at least half of the cases that showed up in the community in the last roughly two weeks were the result of Public Health staff telling people to get tested. Public Health nurses came in every weekend and every day and were making phone calls and connecting the dots to figure out who may be exposed, he said.

In some communities, public health professionals doing contact tracing are able to identify a patient within about 12 hours, Rehwaldt said. Del Norte’s professionals are trying to get as close to that goal as they can, he said.

In addition to four Public Health nurses, 24 county employees are working as contact tracers and case investigators, Snow said. The Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services is also working with Open Door Clinic staff to do case investigation and tracing for their patients, she said.

Snow referenced California’s new contact tracing platform, California Connected, which was launched May 22. Led by Governor Gavin Newsom’s office, the program is a collaborative effort with the California Department of Public Health, the University of California, San Francisco and Los Angeles and local public health departments.

California Connected will help the Del Norte County Public Health Branch contact trace in a “faster more standardized way.”

“For our positive tests, Public Health made direct contact with all individuals diagnosed as positive within 12 hours of positive test confirmation,” Snow said. “We contacted approximately 300 people over the last two and a half weeks when we experienced the recent surge to let them know they could have been exposed and to talk them through to determine how high or low the exposure was. In most cases we’re able to do this within 24 hours of becoming aware of a possible contact.”

The Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services is also participating in a state initiative called Project Roomkey, which addresses the needs of those experiencing homelessness. Contracting with local hotels, the department has provided shelter for 21 adults and four children, Snow said. This included four families.

The department has also provided portable toilets, hand washing stations and hand sanitizers for the homeless population in partnership with Del Norte Mission Possible. Del Norte Mission Possible also worked with county and city staff and the Wild Rivers Community Foundation to provide showers for those experiencing homelessness.

Going back to the new community testing site, which started offering free COVID-19 testing to anyone at Del Norte High School last week, Hemmingsen said he and his wife took advantage fo the service on Friday and both tested negative for the disease.

“I think that’s important as we move through this, whether you feel well or not, you have the opportunity to get tested,” he said. “It’s not invasive. It’s very simple. If you get a chance, get tested.”

Pointing out that the test only shows whether you’re positive or negative for the virus the day you take it, Rehwaldt said how often someone gets tested depends on whether they have suspicious symptoms. Testing positive, whether you have symptoms or not, helps people plan and determine if they may have exposed others to the virus, he said.

But, the test won’t tell you if you’ve had the virus in the past and it won’t predict the future, Rehwaldt said.

Though antibody testing can be a way of determining whether someone had COVID-19 in the past, Rehwaldt said public health officials aren’t asking those who have recovered to take that test.

“What we’re asking them to do is stay home, isolate and monitor their symptoms — we do a lot of follow up calls,” Rehwaldt said. “If they feel like they’re getting better and their fever has stopped without using fever-reducing medicines like Tylenol or Ibuprofen, and it’s stayed that way for three days, and it’s been at least 10 days or more since you started having symptoms, at that point, we consider you not infectious. We categorize that person as recovered.”

Inscore also asked about a business’s responsibility to notify customers if an employee tests positive for the novel coronavirus.

Local public health professionals determine a person is at risk of contracting the virus if they were exposed to another who tested positive for at least 10 minutes, Rehwaldt said. If an employee isn’t working with the public or had a brief encounter of about a minute or less, that’s not considered a risky situation, he said.

However, it would be up to the business owner to decide if they want to notify customers that there was an employee that tested positive, Rehwaldt said.

“It would be up to the business to decide if they want to give more general announcement to customers,” he said. “We would not normally take that step unless there was some problem with us not being able to reach out to people individually.”

Though the forum generated only a handful of direct questions from the public, one, coming from TAB Inc. owner Thomas Barnes, concerned the use of Hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID-19.

“There was a pretty big study published this week that has pretty mush showed the benefit is pretty small if it’s even there, maybe on the order of 2-4 percent,” Rehwaldt told Barnes. “And if you have to use it for a long time, it has significant potential side effects. It’s still an individual decision. It’s not been banned for off-label use for this particular disorder.”

After Rehwaldt answered another question from Barnes about self-isolating if someone travels outside of Curry, Josephine and Humboldt counties, Hemmingsen issued a list of businesses that aren’t able to open yet. This list includes indoor museums, gallery spaces, zoos and libraries; personal services such as nail salons, tattoo parlors and gyms; bars, wineries, lounges and nightclubs; and lodging for leisure and tourism.

“I know there’s a lot of frustration. The governor put out a lot of stuff and has not followed up with any direction,” Hemmingsen said. “For those people who think the county can just lift all these restrictions and go back to work, we’re an arm of the state, we do what the Legislature and governor tells us to do. I don’t think we have the authority to lift the governor’s executive order.”

For more information about signing up for COVID-19 testing in Del Norte County and for more insight into Del Norte County’s reopening plan, click here.

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