Isolation continues for hundreds of Stark County residents exposed to COVID-19
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine lifted the state’s stay-at-home order last month, but some Stark County residents are still required to remain at home, many up to 14 days.
The residents are being watched for COVID-19.
They fall into two categories: isolation, which are those who are symptomatic and quarantine, people who are exposed but not symptomatic. Most people under observation in Ohio and Stark County are quarantined.
Dozens of staffers for Stark County’s four health departments are calling those people who symptomatic to identify others with whom they’ve been in close contact. This is known as contact tracing.
Health officials believe contact tracing along with expanding testing and encouraging people to wear masks and stay six feet apart is crucial to containing the virus before a vaccine or effective treatment is available.
“It’s one of our key tools to slow the spread,” said Canton Health Commissioner Jim Adams.
Medical providers are required to report anyone testing positive for COVID-19 or anyone with probable symptoms to the local health department. Its contact tracers will generally contact that patient within 24 hours. Unless the resident was tied to an outbreak that took place in another health district, the Stark County, Canton, Massillon and Alliance health departments will generally keep tabs on COVID-19 patients who live in their health district.
There have been 803 coronavirus cases in Stark County and 102 deaths since the state start tracking coronavirus.
The contact tracers will ask patients to disclose which locations they visited and and contact information for any people the patients had close contact with back to 48 hours before the onset of symptoms.
Close contact is defined as being less than six feet away for more than 15 minutes. People are considered contagious starting two days before they start feeling sick, said Adams.
Those who test positive who have symptoms are asked to isolate themselves until the symptoms go away. Those who test positive but have no symptoms are asked to isolate themselves for 14 days from the time of the test.
The contact tracers then will call the contacts. In most cases, they haven’t gotten sick. But the contact tracers will ask them too to isolate themselves at home for 14 days from time of exposure as a precaution.
The contact tracers call the COVID-19 patients and the contacts daily or every other day, local health departments say, ensuring they’re staying isolated and asking for temperature readings.
“I asked you to stay home for 14 days, and you feel perfectly fine. That’s a tough ask for people,” said Adams, who added it’s important for contact tracers to establish rapport with the people they’re monitoring and offer “a few words of encouragement here (that) ’you can do this. You’ve got four more days. We really appreciate it.’”
Those who live with other people are asked to stay in their room, wear a mask if they’ve tested positive as much as possible and use separate restrooms while regularly washing counters and door knobs.
People who isolate or are quarantined can still seek medical treatment. And they can go out for a walk or run, if they stay away from other people. But that means no visit to the grocery store or interactions with other people. They have to arrange for someone to deliver groceries. In many cases, they’re restricted to a room if they share a home with family members or roommates.
Those who refuse to self-isolate or go into quarantine face being issued a formal health department order.
“I’ve sent a few letters, maybe six, that I would call probably strongly worded warnings that they should follow our quarantine advice, and they’ve been compliant with that,” Adams said. “I need you to stay home. I need you to watch your symptoms. I need you to minimize the interactions. That means not going out to parties. You don’t go out to eat. Not going to the grocery store. That means don’t hang out with your buddies.”
Alliance Health Commissioner Randy Flint said he has issued two letters of non-compliance.
“They thought they could go to the grocery store,” he said.
The four health departments in Stark County have hired or will hire additional staff to help with the contact tracing. In late March to minimize contact, the health departments closed initiatives like immunization clinics and needle exchanges. Nurses and other staffers devoted to running the clinics were reassigned to contact tracing for COVID-19.
As the number of new cases in Stark County declines, the health departments want to pull some staffers off contact tracing so they can reopen the clinics. Which is why they’ve added contact tracers or will add contact tracers. With many businesses reopening and the state ramping up testing, the departments want to be ready in case Stark County experiences another flareup in COVID-19 infections.
Adams said the Canton Health Department now has about a dozen people performing contact tracing. But it’s working on plans to hire a yet-to-be determined number of contact tracers to allow health department employees to reopen the clinics.
“As we do this opening up, we’re having more social mixing. We’re absolutely going to get more positive cases,” said Adams.
The Stark County Health Department says it has four full-time staff doing contact tracing plus about eight other nursing staff doing so on a part-time basis.
The Massillon Health Department said it’s looking for a new contact tracer who preferably speaks Spanish so its restaurant inspector and staffer for the Women, Infants and Children program can return to their main duties. Those two are helping two full-time nurses with the contact tracing.
The Alliance Health Department said it has five people doing contact tracing including a self-employed contractor hired May 1 for $28 an hour.
The Stark County Health Department’s director of administration Kay Conley said her agency also is looking at hiring nursing students, pre-med students and physicians to be contact tracers.
She said the state has made available to Stark County’s four health departments a federal grant of $402,550 to cover the cost.