Health board has good hospitalization news

Matt Baide | Feb 03, 20220

The Mason County Board of Health met on Jan. 24 to provide updates on COVID-19, environmental health and social service programs.

Mason County Health Officer Dr. Keri Gardner provided her report about the COVID-19 omicron variant, stating she has only hospitalized one person out of the hundreds that she’s seen that have omicron, which she said is good news even though omicron is spreading like wildfire.

Gardner said the unfortunate news is because infections are widespread, even a small percentage of people needing to be hospitalized leads to increased hospitalizations.

“The delta burden is still present in the hospitals so as a result, hospitals remain overfull and transferring patients for care remains really problematic and because of that, I would like to make another plea for folks to consider getting vaccinated and if you’re already vaccinated, to get boostered because even if it’s small numbers of people getting really ill, the hospitals are simply not capable of handling more sick people, especially with prolonged hospitalizations,” Garnder said. “As you may have also read, omicron, we think, will be peaking and maybe already has peaked locally and will start dropping off. Now we’re at a very high rate so that doesn’t mean we’re going to see small numbers of people infected over the next few weeks. Instead of seeing over 2,000 people per 100,000 people get infected every day, we’re going to see on the order of 1,000-plus and then hopefully we will drop back down into triple digits instead of quadruple digits.”

Gardner said a statement released by the national association of county and city health officials recommended stopping contact tracing. Gardner said she and Director of Community Services Dave Windom believe the county is at community spread and contact tracing really loses its value. Gardner said they haven’t made the recommendation to schools to ensure they are working with other local health jurisdictions to provide uniform recommendations.

Gardner said she is looking forward to getting back to the basics of public health.

“Every time we try to take a step forward, it feels like we get slid back two steps by the latest version of COVID,” Gardner said. “So, for that reason too, I would like to request that people get vaccinated because the sooner that people are immune to COVID and not getting hospitalized or going to the emergency department to be evaluated, the sooner that the public health system can get back to the foundation of public health activities that we’re really desperate to get back to.”

Windom offered to take his pickup to the warehouse to pick up tests if needed due to shipping issues with the state. He said he ordered 40,000 tests and the county is working on a distribution plan. The priority is the most vulnerable populations, including people who are non-English speakers or have a lack of access to the internet. Along with test distribution, there will also be mask distribution with the county trying to facilitate the current stock before replenishing it.

He also noted the state Department of Health will now only be reporting COVID-19 data three times per week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The county will also be reporting data three times per week on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to reflect numbers from the state.

Environmental Health Manager Alex Paysse reported the Environmental Health department received 1,618 permits in 2021, a 2.3% increase from 2020. He said more than 1,918 inspections were completed by environmental health staff across licensing, code enforcement, and permitting services.

The number of food establishments licensed was 292, down from 365 in 2020, which is due to the pandemic. There was an increase in food worker cards issued at 3,026, up from 2,301 in 2020.

Onsite sewer system permits increased 3% from 2020 to 690, up from 669 in 2020. Well construction permits increased 8% and water adequacy increased 24% from 2020.

In a social service program report, county staff reported information that the planning and permit department shared that if all construction goes through, it will equal 614 new housing units in the Belfair area.

The Mason County Mental Health & Substance Use Disorder Response provided an update, stating overdose fatalities continue to climb nationally and in the state. Mason County Public Health has distributed more than 2,500 naloxone kits to the community since 2017.

The Substance Use Mobile Outreach of Mason County had 54 interactions with 44 different participants during the reporting period and 18% of visits reported knowing someone who had overdosed in the past 30 days.

For more information, go to masoncountywa.gov.