MOHAVE COUNTY – Department of Public Health Director Denise Burley was able to share some good news on several COVID-19 battlefronts during Monday’s Mohave County Board of Supervisors meeting. She began with declining new case counts.
“This has been our second big week of decreases of confirmed cases. We had 149 cases last week. That’s a big, big improvement,” Burley said. “We want to thank all of the people out there who are taking all the steps, the preventive measures, wearing your mask, staying home when you’re sick and taking all of those necessary steps to prevent spread of the virus. “
Burley told supervisors that extra staff hired through use of federal emergency funds has cleared a case investigation and contact tracing backlog.
“All cases except maybe the weekend, we’re still working on the weekend, that can be assigned are assigned to an investigator,” Burley said. “2,000 cases have been completed. 1,000 cases are active.”
Burley also informed the board that the investigators are not working cases during weekends. Supervisor Buster Johnson voiced his disapproval.
Johnson said if the federal government provides emergency funds to counties, the counties should be expected to use the money to battle the public health crisis round the clock 24-7.
“We’re taking CARES money, which is obviously supposed to be helping us with the pandemic, but it’s not important enough to have people work weekends?,” Johnson queried rhetorically. He suggested split shifts or staff rotations so that contact tracing occurs every day.
Burley responded that she has been considering a personnel plan that would keep investigation and tracing work active through weekends.
At least part of Burley’s plan to streamline coronavirus reporting to the Board was approved, but parties have different views of how the other part is, or isn’t being handled. There’s no doubt the Board approved moving to a new fact sheet and webpage for information and data display.
Burley wants to provide the daily information late in the morning rather than late afternoon. Communications Director Roger Galloway and supervisor Buster Johnson have argued in favor of afternoon release.
Johnson said the press and public is accustomed to afternoon information. Afternoon information held for release the next morning, Johnson said, puts newspapers in position of reporting two-day old numbers the following day.
Burley and county manager Sam Elters have said timeliness and immediacy will be sacrificed, but that the information will be more accurate and consistent if corrected before late morning release.
The Board made no motion and took no action regarding the timing of the release of the information. Contacted after the meeting, Elters said staff will be converting to late morning release. Deputy county attorney Ryan Esplin, however, said he thinks Board action would be better practice if the county is changing the timing of the information the county has been releasing for five months.
Johnson agreed with Esplin. Johnson said he’ll argue the matter during Thursday’s meeting if staff indeed implements the change before that time.
Burley also told supervisors her staff is working with school districts that are ramping up for a new school year.
“The schools are going to need additional assistance from us moving forward with guidance and direction and looking at numbers and data to help them make decisions. We started with a meeting on Thursday of last week,” Burley said. “We are compiling information and building decision trees for them.”
- -Dave Hawkins
