Public Health Board discusses phased re-opening at weekly meeting

The Hill County Public Health Board met Friday to discuss the recently ordered “phased re-opening” of Montana’s economy and what it means for Hill County.

Hill County Health Officer Jessica Sheehy said there is good news for the county and state regarding the pandemic.

“There has been an increase in tests, but not an increase in positives which is a good sign,” Sheehy said.

She said the governor’s recent directive allows counties to implement more restrictive measures than the Phase One re-opening if they think they are warranted, but Hill County’s relative success makes further measures unnecessary for now.

“At this time, with the numbers falling where they have been, and our testing numbers where they have been, I don’t have any recommendations to do anything more restrictive,” she said.

However, she said the county should remain vigilant and ready to act should positive cases begin to turn up.

“It’s not that we’re out of the woods yet,” Sheehy said, “There is certainly still a risk, and as people traveling more, the risk of exposure does go up. Certainly, all of us for the next few weeks are anxious to keep monitoring those numbers.”

She said the department spent most of the last week responding to people’s questions regarding the directive and the state of the pandemic in general. Sheehy said she encouraged everyone with questions to go to the Public Health Departments website to find the information they need.

She said everyone, particularly business owners should read the full directive, but the department will do everything it can to provide clarification and explanation.

“We can certainly answer any specific questions, but it’s not just a massive opening back to where we were on March 20,” Sheehy said.

She said, though the department’s staff members can answer questions, they cannot provide direct recommendations to an individual business on whether it is safe to open, or how that should be done.

“The Health Department can certainly help with these directives, and provide recommendations, but it’s not really for us to indicate whether or not an individual business should open or not,” she said, “It’s up to whether they feel they can follow social distancing and the directives.”

Hill County Public Health Director Kim Larson said any facility that feels it can’t follow the guidelines shouldn’t open regardless of the population it serves.

The board addressed employer health assessment of employees required under Phase One and what kind of legal ramifications they might have.

Hill County Attorney Karen Alley said the directive doesn’t provide guidelines on what health assessment entails for employers, but from a legal standpoint those screenings must be even-handed and non-prejudicial.

“Quite honestly, employers should have been doing this all along, with those that were in the essential services sector,” Alley said.

Sheehy also provided an update on the state of testing in the county, and how many tests are available.

“We don’t have concrete numbers and that’s actually a good thing,” she said.

Sheehy said that by introducing saline into transport mediums the number of available tests has risen by several hundred, but the department couldn’t provide an exact figure.

She said because the number of available tests has gone up the department has loosened the requirements for testing to include people who are symptomatic but not necessarily part of a high-risk population. Priority is still being given to people in those groups, and that they can’t test everyone, she added.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said she’s concerned that testing confirmation counts people — such as Hill County residents — as positives for the county where they reside rather than where they were tested. People who were tested in Hill County could be listed as a positive for other counties. This method of counting has the potential to skew data and mislead people, she said.

“Since we’re extremely concerned about how contagious it is, it seems a little bit odd that you wouldn’t report anyone who was tested in our area,” McLean said.

“Hill County Public Health will not report on anyone who isn’t a Hill County resident, that’s how public health works,” Larson said, “It’s not reported to us, so we can’t send it out.”

Sheehy said, if a resident from another area or state tests positive at a facility in Hill County, the department would immediately begin contact tracing to track and mitigate any risk to the public, they just wouldn’t appear in the number provided by the Health Department.

“It’s not that we don’t know about that, it’s just that it’s not a case for Hill County to count,” she said.

The Board of Health determined it would continue to hold its weekly meetings as long as the pandemic remains an issue.