||| FROM BRENDAN COWAN for DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT |||
Two new positive COVID test results have been reported for San Juan County. One each on Orcas and San Juan. Total case count for the islands is now 49. Both cases are close contacts of previous cases.
It really isn’t too late to get our arms around this. Truly. We’re fed up, but if we change our behavior we can stop this recent surge of island cases. There is hope on the horizon (vaccines, better treatments, etc.), but first we need to get this under control.
Important things to know:
- Future case updates will be provided weekly on Friday, unless situations occur that pose an immediate widespread threat to public health or are especially noteworthy or unexpected. Case counts will continue to be updated daily HERE.
- All islanders should assume that there are asymptomatic infectious individuals in our community.
- Public Health staff are literally working around the clock to investigate each case, quickly notify all close contacts, and ensure testing, isolation, and quarantine procedures are followed. The more close contacts each of us have, the more difficult that work is, and the more likely it is a case spreads.
- As has always been the case, most cases appear to be directly caused by close indoor contact with non-household members or extended travel off-island.
PLEASE:
- Shrink our bubbles. No more indoor social contact outside of our households.
- Don’t shame or blame those who test positive. It can happen to anyone. Empathy is key.
- Ensure island businesses, non-profits, and other organizations are following face covering and social distancing to the full extent possible. Owners, customers, and employees need to insist on it.
- Stay close to home. If you travel and have close interaction with others while indoors and unmasked, quarantine for at least 7 days after you return, ideally 14.
- Mask up.
We will continue to provide weekly updates not only of new cases, but also as the situation (hopefully) improves, cases lessen, and the number of islanders in quarantine diminishes.
NOTE: Going forward, new case updates will be provided weekly (on Friday), unless there is a case that is especially noteworthy or a direct threat to widespread health of the community.
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Thank you Brenden. Vital information that we all depend on.
That’s TEN cases in the last 4 to 5 days, two of them on Orcas Island. It sure sounds like community spread of the virus is happening, especially on San Juan Island. Time to hunker down at home again.
And I just heard from a reliable source that there are two more cases on Orcas.
Protocols, not lockdowns. Michael, your comments are short-sighted and selfish as always. Congratulations on being in the financial position to be able to “hunker down” at home whenever you want. The rest of us, however, have mouths to feed and a community to prop up so people like you have stocked shelves in the market and gas in your car.
Dale, If you were not so quite so quick to call your neighbors “short-sighted and selfish as always”, because you have mouths to feed and a community to prop up…I am guessing that folks would be much more likely to help you out. As for me, I’d like to anyhow because I still feel for you…what can we do?
I appreciate that, Merry. My comment was directed at Riordan only who has been on this site preaching restrictions that would benefit himself while not having a second thought to the working class who are negatively affected. We don’t want government handouts. We don’t want something for nothing. We want to work hard and be tired at the end of the day. We want to be positive, contributing members of this community operating with reasonable covid protocols. And we want government to get out of our personal lives and stop the restrictions that only minimally affect the government and the “elites” as they cripple everyone else.
Well said Dale. What the academic elites don’t get is that working folks don’t want handouts; they want the integrity that comes from earning their own way with their own skills. My dad was like that, forced out of school during the depression, he and his grandfather found work in an Arizona silver-mine. Later he was a cannery foreman and labor leader, his last words to me were “I fed my family”.
Must have rubbed off on me, forty four years in engineering and construction my most rewarding time was as a field engineer working on-site with craft labor to find practical solutions to problems. Those guys were a continuing source of brilliant solutions, they didn’t care to read, write or talk incessantly but preferred using their hands to create stuff, make stuff, build stuff. They’re the ones who built this country and keep it running, not he pointy headed academics.
Continue to speak out my friend, Dr. Riordan may pay no attention (PNA), but others do.
Phil, Dale? I’m working class, and I’ve been paying attention. Your output tells me that you must be listening to a different news source than I do. Knowing what I do now I cannot share your current beliefs.
Can you share some of the information that has led you to think that a “no action” plan is the best plan in dealing with the ongoing health care crisis? Thank you.