Health district gets less cooperation

MOSES LAKE — Grant County Commissioner Richard Stevens has been diagnosed with COVID-19.

“I wear a mask all the time and still got COVID,” he said during a meeting of Grant County Health District on Wednesday.

Stevens said, however, he still believes people should wear masks in public in order to protect themselves and others and limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Masks may not be as good as they should be, but they are better than nothing,” Stevens said.

County Health Officer Alexander Brzezny said if more people wore masks — four out of every five would be enough — when out and about, the COVID curve could be flattened again in as little as four weeks.

“Masking saves lives,” he said.

With the rise in COVID-19 cases, district employees who are trying to trace people exposed to the novel coronavirus say they are finding the public is less cooperative now than at the beginning of the pandemic.

“The public has become hostile and defiant,” said Community Public Health Manager Maria Vargas. “We’ve met with hostility and uncooperative employers and even verbal abuse.”

Most of the health district’s nearly two-dozen employees have devoted their time since the start of COVID-19 outbreak to contact tracing — finding out from infected people whom they have been in contact with for the prior few weeks — in order to let people know that they may have been exposed. It’s tough work, Vargas added, especially given that the county has reported an average of 30 new cases each day for the last two weeks.

“Cases are surging, and it is grueling,” she said.

Vargas told members of the district’s board of directors that the district needs the cooperation of county residents in order to help limit the spread of the disease.

Administrator Theresa Adkinson said she has asked the state health department for help with contact tracing, but state officials are overwhelmed right now as well.

“They are bringing on more investigators,” she said.

Adkinson said the health district has spent roughly $550,000 dealing with coronavirus, some of that covered by federal and state grants and the rest mostly by waivers in current grant programs such as marijuana prevention. She said she will come to the board in September for a budget revision.

The board took no action and made no decisions at the meeting.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.