The Fremont County Incident Management Team has reiterated how important the following information is for our communities to reopen. County 10 shared their following plea and information on Saturday, April 18th; and they have requested we share it again because it is important for our county to reopen sooner rather than later.
The new document entitled “Opening up America Again,” published by the White House, gives guidance in our considerations on reopening our communities from the closure orders.
The two key elements for moving past the “gating criteria” are a 14-day downward trend in positives or a 14-day downward trend in positives as a percentage of total testing. We are watching these without conclusive results as of today.
Another key criteria we are watching is having an adequate supply of PPE, which can be quickly supplied from necessary sources. As the governor said yesterday, we are not there yet.
Realizing that all of these are necessary steps before we can move to phase one, we at the Fremont County Health response team would like to make a plea to you, the public, for help.
Please consider wearing masks in public places where close contact may happen. We recognize that personal mask use is a choice. This personal and community action says to everyone “I wear one to protect you, and you wear one to protect me.”
Why a doubling up on the masks? We are now seeing studies where 10% to 30% of people who test positive for COVID-19 are asymptomatic (NO symptoms). This makes it difficult to know who can pass the illness on to someone else. We are not trying to impinge on your freedoms. We are using the latest data-driven knowledge to keep you safe. Without real-time, high volume testing to find positive cases, mask use helps to slow transmission between people making it more likely for health officials to make good decisions about the next steps in their care.
Opening up the county will need to be done. But, it needs to be done in a measured fashion to prevent a large surge of hospitalized patients. SageWest has done an excellent job in caring for patients in what we still believe may be the first wave. Our whole community can help to prevent the potential next wave. Please realize that if the next wave does occur as restrictions lift, our first course of action may be to have the restrictions reinstated. Why would we want that? Let’s proceed cautiously together. Thanks for your help.
Don’t forget about the Fremont County Incident Management Team’s two websites: Q&A & The Hub. All the updates from the Fremont County Incident Management Team and Dr. Gee can be viewed on County 10 by clicking here.