Marshall County Health Administrator Ashley Garcia updated the commissioners on Monday concerning details surrounding the response to COVID-19 and the governor’s update on Friday.
Garcia said a centralized contact tracing system will be initialized on Monday, May 11 which will take some of the responsibility off of Health Nurse Lisa Letsinger.
“Basically, what that means is that she’s not going to be exclusively responsible doing that for our county and it’s going to centralized in the state,” commented Garcia. “The State has hired more than 500 individuals that have public health backgrounds to do that.”
The commissioners were concerned with that since the current system has local entities involved and the incoming group doesn’t have that rapport with Marshall County citizens. Garcia said she hopes a lot of it can still happen on the local level to bridge that gap.
Additionally, Garcia said they will be updating policies when it comes to the county’s campgrounds. Campgrounds will be opening on May 24 with social distancing guidelines in place, according to the governor’s Back on Track guideline.
“They will be more reflective of what the governor has established as of late with what’s allowed to be open at the campgrounds themselves. We have interpreted the rules to mean that if they are lot owners, property owners they can go in. If you’re a seasonal renter, a regular renter, you can bring your trailer or your RV onto the site and it stays there for the summer or season. We’re not going to do allow people to do the whole back-and-forth thing. As far as I understood it from Dr. Holm most recently that’s where we landed.”
Garcia said she will be updating guidelines with restaurants to be open on Monday, May 11. No bar seating will be allowed.
Garcia mentioned that the Tri-Way Drive-in movie theater opened last weekend, but that status may change, based on the report she got from the food division. She will be consulting Health Officer Dr. Byron Holm concerning that.
Garcia still encourages everyone to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water and exercise social distancing whenever possible.
