— from Brendan Cowan, Department of Emergency Management —
Over the weekend, the San Juan County Health & Community Service Department was notified of a new positive test result from a resident of Orcas Island. The patient has been asymptomatic and was tested as part of a routine medical screening.
The County team has been actively investigating over the holiday weekend, and close contacts of the patient have been notified and are being tested.
Like all cases, this one should serve as a reminder to all of us to maintain caution and awareness about the risk of COVID transmission.
Over the 4th of July weekend, many island residents have engaged in social activities with friends and family that may have been a bit more relaxed than at any point over the past months. Some of those friends and family may have been visiting from off-island. This uptick in activity, along with increased visitor traffic suggests that the next week or two would be an especially good time to dial back our wider interactions and take a measure of potential impacts from any recent relaxed attention to social distancing.
As always, those individuals who are at high-risk from COVID should be especially careful and extremely thoughtful about when and how they and others in their immediate household choose to engage with the broader community.
[Editor’s Note: The State Department of Health shows 20 cases in the San Juans. However, one of those cases involves someone with a local address who has not been here in the San Juans.]
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