This afternoon, Dr. Teresa Frankovich, Humboldt County’s health officer, took a number of media questions on the state of the pandemic — particularly about the state’s recent reclassification of Humboldt into the state’s “red” tier, the second-highest.

Also discussed: What has driven the local spike in case numbers, school reopenings, the current impact on our health care system and when a new health officer will be hired. (Dr. Frankovich retired from her position with the county two months ago, but has stayed on until another person can be found.)

Video above, rough transcript below.

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The Times-Standard asks, “Are any cases tied to gatherings on Halloween or Election Day activities?”

I would say that I’m aware of some cases related to Halloween gatherings, I’m not aware of any in particular related to Election Day gatherings.

The Times-Standard asks, “When you spoke with school superintendents, what guidance was offered regarding in-person classes for those schools that are offering them?”

Well, we are supportive of the schools maintaining their current operations. Being in the red tier does not mean that schools need to change or to go to distance learning in any way, even the schools that are open now, if we moved into purple, would be able to still be open. The only difference is is that schools who are not yet open, if they, if we move into the purple tier, they would not be able to open until we moved out of the purple tier.

The Times-Standard asks, “During the Supervisors meeting there was discussion of the possibility of moving to the purple tier at some point. What kind of lead time would affected businesses receive for that change?”

That’s a good question. All I can say is that we’re continually monitoring our data and so we start to get an inkling of what that might look like at the end of a week, for instance. The problem we face is that we can never be entirely certain because up until the last moment, additional labs can come into the state reporting system.

So we usually have a pretty good guess and we will certainly message to that effect as we are become aware of it, but right now obviously the state with the increased urgency of the situation are not allowing a long time to prepare for closure once it’s announced, and so we do recognize that you know that’s a challenge for businesses impacted and we will just try and get as much heads up as we can.

The Times-Standard asks, “Demographically, are younger people driving the case count currently?”

Absolutely. It’s very clear about 75 percent of our cases are in people under 50. I would tell you that a lot of our more recent cases are in a younger population younger than 40. And so it again comes back to that issue of both:  It’s young workforce who may be getting a lot of exposures through just a lot of work with the public etc., but it’s also because you know younger people probably tend to go out a bit more than I would at 60 and so again and I do feel like people who are younger and in good health feel probably somewhat invulnerable to this.

And I just want to again emphasize that regardless of age anyone can become infected. Some people will be impacted more by the illness than others but we also know that people even at young ages can become critically ill and have died related to COVID, so it just serves everyone well to be cautious in their behavior, protect themselves and everyone else in their community.

The Redheaded Blackbelt asks, “Can you elaborate on whether any public gatherings have contributed to the recent spike in local cases or if the vast majority are individual friend and family groups gathering as well as travel?”

Honestly, I’m not aware of any large-event type of thing that’s been identified as a source of multiple infections.

I would tell you that we have learned a great deal about COVID. There’s still a lot to go, but one thing we do know is that outdoor gatherings, even larger gatherings, do not seem to be driving a lot of cases and so if people are in a group, you know the the outdoor setting, even when we’re talking about three households being able to gather, being outdoors, hugely safer than being indoors. And by the same token, if you are able to eat outdoors as opposed to indoors in a mixed group, that’s hugely helpful, because of course you’re not going to be masked.

These indoor activities are the ones that are driving infection for the most part and we just need to be really cautious about that.

The Lost Coast Outpost asks, “Today at the Board of Supervisors meeting, Public Health Director Michele Stephens mentioned that this is the last time you will be briefing the board. Why is that? Has a new health officer been hired?”

I think she actually said it may be the last time. But I think the county is in the hiring process and so I’m hopeful that there’s going to be a new health officer in position very soon.

There’s been a little confusion on this point, but I did announce that I was resigning my position I think early in September, but I also said that I was going to stay in the position until a replacement was found if at all possible and so I really wanted to have that continuity in the process rather than having an interim health officer so I’m hopeful that the new health officer will be on board soon and that person then will of course be addressing the board.

The North Coast News asks, “What are the theories/ science on why we are seeing such a rise in cases statewide and nationally what has changed in behaviors/attitudes and circumstances?”

Well, I think the, a couple big drivers of this are that first people are experiencing what has been called COVID fatigue. People are just tired of this, and I completely understand that — we all want normal, we want to go back to normal, we want this to be over, and I think to some extent at times people just pretend that it is and just behave as they normally would have before COVID.

And so I think what’s happening is it’s challenging to continue all of the preventative measures that we’ve been talking about and limiting social activities and things — I get it — but we have to do it going forward.

The other problem that we’re facing is change in weather. We have moved from a time where people could be outdoors much of the time to now where they’re indoors because of colder temperatures, particularly in some parts of the country, and also in Humboldt, things like rain and you know even sitting outside in the evening, it gets a lot chillier right now, so it’s driving a lot of activity indoors. And as I mentioned previously, that is a big, big risk factor.

The North Coast News asks, “You have previously mentioned that counties have the discretion to increase restrictions beyond what is set in place by the tier assigned by the state. Does Humboldt have any plans to tighten restrictions locally beyond what the red tier requires in order to get a handle on cases?”

No. I do think that moving from the yellow and not having the intermediary step to orange, taking us right to red, is a good move. I think we needed that big change in what we’re doing and I’m hopeful that together with people sort of taking note of the situation and really trying to enhance their preventative measures, that that will help to put the brakes on what’s happening. I don’t envision us unilaterally at this time moving into a purple tier that isn’t warranted by our metrics.

But you know we’re continually, as I said, reviewing the data. If we become aware of some worrisome trends even before the state is aware of that we would certainly be having that conversation. But right now I’m hopeful. I really do think that, with, you know — since many of our cases are still being driven by travel and gatherings, we have seen an increase in community transmission, but not so dramatic that we can’t get out of this. We can get out of this if people will really just abide by the no-gathering and really try not to travel, especially in terms of high-risk travel and by that I mean, you know, traveling and in visiting with, staying with friends and family, being in households together. Gathering in that fashion is particularly high-risk. By the same token bringing family members here to do that is very high-risk.

Even though we’re having trouble with our case count right now, we’re still in better shape than most other areas, so you can assume if you’re leaving Humboldt you’re going to be in a place that has more COVID, your risk on any encounter is going to be higher and there’s a higher likelihood that you’re going to bring it back home with you. So I think we have the tools, I honestly think that we could put the brakes on halt and even possibly get back but it’s going to take a lot of joint effort across the community.

The North Coast News asks, “Last week Dr. Ennis said the cases were starting to intersect with local health care workers. What is your number one concern going into this new large wave of cases? Is it hospital capacity? Health care workers contracting it?”

Well, obviously there are a lot of concerns going forward. More immediately I want to keep the cases coming in at a number that can still allow for really good robust case investigation because I think that is what’s helped contain spread in our communities so far. We cannot endlessly add staff for large numbers of cases, At some point it just isn’t effective anymore. And so we really need to be able to stem the pace of increase so that we can continue to do really good investigation.

Obviously the end game on this is to prevent both serious illness requiring hospitalization and people dying with COVID, both from COVID itself and people dying from other things like heart attacks, strokes, automobile accidents because they can’t get hospital care because the hospital is serving COVID and full with those patients, so yes the endgame here is trying to protect our health care system capacity from an overwhelming surge of cases that really compromises care for everyone and so it’s just particularly important to adhere to all the things that we’ve talked about.

I’d also point out that along the way, you know we’re impacting our business community and that it has an impact for all of us living here. So you know maintaining and being able to actually go to a less restrictive tier benefits all of us for sure.