State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box is voicing her frustration with those who choose not to wear face masks in businesses.
“I don’t understand it because that’s a selfish way of behaving,” she said during Friday’s COVID-19 press conference. “Because you may very well do fine. You may asymptomatically be carrying this disease, or if you get sick, it may be a runny nose or a little bit of a cough and you may think it’s allergies. But the elderly person that comes behind you, may not have that same response to that disease.”
Box, from help with estate planning attorneys noted that while elderly people account for most of the COVID-19 deaths, anyone can get it, and about a third of the state’s COVID-19 cases are people under the age of 40.
Box touted some positive statewide trends when it comes to new cases, deaths, and hospital admissions. The Regenstrief Institute believes that 63 percent of Indiana’s COVID-19 patients have recovered, up from 60 percent last week.
But Box pointed out that the number of deaths is now approaching 2,000. “One death was devastating. Two thousand is not even – it’s hard to even describe the feelings,” she said. “If you had asked me 10 weeks or 12 weeks ago that we’d be sitting here with this many Hoosiers who have lost their lives from this particular disease, I think I would have had trouble understanding that. It’s been the hardest part of this job, quite honestly.”
Box warned that the risk is not over, and rising case numbers locally have drawn concern. As the press conference was taking place, the Marshall County Health Department issued its own press release, urging residents to continue washing their hands, wearing masks, and taking other precautions, after the number of COVID-19 cases there nearly doubled in a week.
The health department also pointed out that neighboring Elkhart County is considered to be at a high risk of an outbreak, according to the New York Times. The Marshall County Health Department notes that the increase in positive cases corresponds with the opening of businesses and people being out and about.
Meanwhile, Dr. Box said the increase in Elkhart County cases is simply due to more testing. “We know that that increased testing, especially as we look at some of the populations that we had been targeting in Elkhart, like our Latino population, that those numbers will increase, and we are working with some particular industries up there that have been a part of this, too,” Box explained.
Governor Eric Holcomb reiterated his belief that the state can safely reopen while saving lives, and said that shutting everything down completely would cause a lot of collateral damage.
