Buncombe County Government, NC Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates, 30 Jul 2020

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From YouTube: Buncombe County COVID-19 Community Update (July 30, 2020)

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Buncombe County COVID-19 Community Update (July 30, 2020)

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Good afternoon and welcome to the july 30th community update I'm stacy wood and I serve as a public information officer here in the emergency operations center in response to covet 19 in buncombe county.

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This community update is available in spanish on the buncombe county, health and human services, facebook page, and that can be found on facebook at bchs.

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Thank you to all of our partners who make this information available to our spanish-speaking populations and our deaf and hard of hearing audiences, and we will start with an update from dr jennifer mullendore, our interim public health director and medical director in buncombe county.

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Good afternoon, over the past week, buncombe county has continued to see a sustained increase in the number of new cases of covid19 reported in county residents daily.

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Over the last week, an average of 41 new cases have been reported daily to buncombe county public health, down slightly from an average of 43 new cases reported to us daily during the prior week.

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As of noon. Today, there have been 1 560 lab, confirmed cases of covid19 and buncombe county residents. Almost 58 percent of these cases have been in individuals between the ages of 18 to 49..

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Sadly, 45 buncombe county residents have died as a result of their covid19 infections. 38 of those individuals were residents of long-term care facilities.

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One of the important trends we are following to understand. The level of spread in the in our community is the percent of tests that come back positive for covid19 in north carolina as a whole. At this time, eight percent of covid19 tests performed are coming back positive.

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This percentage for the state has ranged from seven to ten percent over the past month in buncombe county during the month of july. Five percent of tests have come back positive for covid19 up from two and three percent in june.

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This indicates that we are seeing continued spread of covid19 in our community, the takeaway from all the data and trends that we are monitoring from the number of cases to the percent of tests that are positive to the percent of emergency department. Visits for covid-like illness is that there is widespread transmission of covid19 in the county.

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The region and the state data is helpful if it informs decision making and action and right now, based on this data, we should be acting as if everyone has coveted 19 in our community. Our focus needs to be on spreading of stopping that spread and preventing new infections.

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Please do everything you can to limit your exposure to others outside of your household and practice. The three w's when you must be out in public around others, wear a face covering wait, six feet apart from others and wash your hands. Often we encourage individuals to access the information at the north carolina department of health and human services dashboard in addition to our website, it can be found at.

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Covid19.Ncdhhs.Gov backslash dashboard.

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If you meet any of the following criteria, we are still recommending that you get tested for covet 19..

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If you have symptoms, including fever, chills, cough shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, sore throat, loss of taste or smell nasal congestion, runny nose, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

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If you are a close contact to someone with covid19, whether or not you have symptoms, if you are a member of a high-risk group and think you have been exposed to covet 19 again whether or not you have symptoms, this includes people who live and work in high-risk settings such as long-term care facilities, homeless, shelters or migrant farm worker camps, people over the age of 65 or those of any age with underlying medical conditions, persons from historically marginalized populations, health care workers are first responders and frontline and essential workers in settings where social distancing is difficult to maintain repeat testing is not recommended unless you are an employee in a long-term care facility or have been directed to be retested by a health care provider or public health nurse.

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We encourage you to use the covid19 self-checker found at buncomberready.org, assess your symptoms and get connected to testing even with our community testing sites. Currently on pause, covet. 19 testing is widely available in our county through primary care providers. Community health, centers urgent, cares hospital systems and pharmacies.

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If you do not have health insurance, we encourage you to contact your closest federally qualified health center or one of our local clinics that offers discounted fees or programs that cover the cost of testing and your visit.

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These would include mercy, urgent care range, urgent care and mayheck family health center at biltmore for more information about testing locations. Please visit north carolina's covid19, find my testing place website or call 828 250 five: three: zero, zero planning and logistics for the buncombe county community testing sites are underway and moving forward rapidly.

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We have finalized our contract with a local lab and are hiring additional staff as we speak to fill out a variety of positions and needs associated with our covid19 response.

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If we have uniform compliance with the public health guidance that we've been given, we can reduce the spread of this disease.

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If that compliance level is in the 90 to 95 percent range, we can potentially reduce transmission of covid19 to negligible levels.

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If you want businesses to open more fully, if you want to get your kids back in school in person, this is the path forward. We can do it. The number one action that we can all take right now is to prevent kovid from spreading in the first place.

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You can do this by wearing a face covering staying at home as much as possible and not participating in activities that put you and your family at risk.

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August is national immunization awareness month. Now is the time to make sure that your children are up to date on their immunizations covet is not the only infection we should be worried about infection rates or immunization rates. Excuse me have dropped across the country and we need to do all we can to turn that around.

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Please talk to your medical provider or call the buncombe county immunization clinic at.

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828-250-5096, thank you and stay safe.

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As a reminder for those of you who may not have been aware on tuesday, governor cooper issued executive order, 153 stopping the sale of alcoholic drinks and restaurants, breweries, wineries and distilleries at 11 pm north carolina bars that are currently closed will remain closed. This order will take effect tomorrow, friday july 31st.

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We are happy to announce that the new buncombe county public health director, stacy saunders, will be joining us next week. She will be a great addition to our covid19 response and, while I have the opportunity, I wanted to say thank you to dr mullendore, who has done an incredible job, balancing these two very stressful and important roles in our county as the interim public health, director and medical director.

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Truly her dedication to public health and the way that she shows up with professionalism and excellence in this field in our in our covered response is truly remarkable.

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In closing, if you must go out in public, please give each other at least six feet of space wear face covering and let's make safe choices during this pandemic.

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Thank you for tuning in today, and we will provide the next community update on thursday august 6 at 3 pm. Thank you.