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

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

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Buncombe County's COVID-19 Update for March 30, 2020.

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Good afternoon today is March 30th 2020. My name is Stacy wood and I'm, a public information officer from the emergency operation center or the EOC. Today's community update on the Cova 19 response in Buncombe County includes updates from dr. Jennifer mullendore Buncombe County, intern Public, Health Director, Fletcher, tove, Public, Health preparedness, director for Buncombe County and Dan Leroy president and CEO of United Way Asheville in Buncombe County.

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Our goal in providing these live updates is to ensure that everyone in our community has access to the same information during this public health response to a global pandemic. This is an opportunity for us to connect with you at the local level to deliver information and updates from the EOC that helps us all to become more connected and empowered.

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The spanish-language version of this community briefing will be live streamed on the Buncombe County Health and Human Services Facebook page, and that handle is @b c HHS.

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Good afternoon I'm dr. Jennifer mullendore interim Health Director for Buncombe County. As of this time, Buncombe County, Health and Human Services has been notified of a total of 21 lab, confirmed cases of kovat 19 in Buncombe County residents, 16 of the 21, have recovered from their illness and have been released from isolation by Buncombe County Public Health.

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As we announced yesterday, the first death associated with kovat 19 in a Buncombe County resident occurred on March 28. The individual was elderly and had underlying health problems. Our thoughts are with the family. During this time, Buncombe County residents with lab, confirmed kovat 19, have ranged in age from their 20s to their 80s.

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No new cases have been reported in out-of-state travelers to our county.

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While we are concerned about kovat 19 affecting anyone, there are certain situations in which a case of kovat 19 is considered more worrisome due to the potential for it to spread quickly to large numbers of people, including those with underlying health problems.

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These situations include congregate, living settings like long term care facilities, shelters for persons experiencing homelessness and detention facilities, Buncombe County Public, Health and staff from the Buncombe County Emergency Operations Center have been working with these facilities and community partners who serve these populations over the past month with regards to long-term care facilities, Buncombe County environmental health staff and Fire Marshal's from the county and the city of Asheville visited each state licensed adult day, Center residential care facility, nursing, home and other similar institutions.

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The goal of these visits was to ensure that the facilities had and were following appropriate guidance from the state and the Centers for Disease, Control and Prevention on how to prevent, prepare and respond to cases of kovat 19 public health staff continue to communicate and coordinate with the staff at these facilities.

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We believe that this proactive effort has laid the foundation for a rapid response to a case of kovat 19 in such a facility.

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I'll now turn it over to Fletcher.

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Good afternoon I'm Fletcher tove Buncombe County public health, emergency preparedness, director, I'm gonna answer some questions from our media partners, but first I'm going to spend the majority of my time today discussing how governor Cooper's executive order number 121 his stay at home order differs from Baulkham County's stay home stay safe declaration to begin. I want to point out that governor Cooper made it clear that wherever the state order in local orders diverge, the more restrictive order will be observed.

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I also want to emphasize that Buncombe County is going to take actions that best safeguard the public health for Buncombe County residents.

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Welcome County's declaration is set to expire on the morning of April 9th, while the governor's set to expire on April, 30th, baulkham County will maintain its declaration until April 9th, at which time we'll reassess the situation and the latest data to determine if we will align our County with the state guidance from April 9th until April 30th.

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There are three main areas where the state and local orders are different. The first main place the orders are different, are in the mass gathering guidance.

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The governor's order allows public gatherings of 10 or less, with an exception of funerals which can have up to 50 people.

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Buncombe counties declaration is more restrictive than the governor's order and out until April 9th there may be. No public gatherings of any number of people and religious services to include funerals are limited to no more than 10 people, which ideally should only be immediate family members.

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The second area with Baulkham County, is more restrictive in its orders, are for short-term rentals and lodging until April, 9th short-term rentals to include Airbnb VRBO, hotels and motels should not allow new patrons to enter and establish themselves current residents at these lodging sites are permitted to stay, but leisure travel reservations should be suspended.

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Employees who work for businesses deemed essential may stay in any lodging.

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Also of note per our declaration. Any visitor to Buncombe County from an area experiencing community spread, which is pretty much everywhere at this point, must self quarantine in their residence for 14 days. Upon arrival, this means. If someone is coming in to visit town for a week, they must spend that entire week in quarantine.

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The third area, where Buncombe County is more restrictive in its definition of essential business. The governor's order and section c1 has a clause that allows any business that can meet social distancing requirements to continue operations in Buncombe County. You must meet one of the specified criteria of an essential business to be deemed essential.

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These criteria are listed in both the Supplemental Declaration and the interpretive guidance which can be found at WWE, Buncombe, County, org.

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Now I'll proceed to some questions. We've received from our media partners, our auto sales, essential in-person, auto sales are non-essential until April 9th, although dealerships can show and sell vehicles virtually and they may close and complete paperwork in processes as long as they are adhering to physical, distancing and hygiene guidance, auto repair and maintenance are essential services. If an auto dealership has a maintenance and service line on-site, that line of operations may continue to operate is Realty essential in person house showing is non-essential until April, 9th Realtors can show and sell homes virtually.

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They can also continue and complete any vital paperwork or legal processes to continue sales in general. Under the minimum business operations clause of our declaration, they can also send staff and contractors to houses to maintain and update their virtual inventory is lawn care. Essential lawn care may operate under the minimum business operations clause.

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This means minimal staffing as long as they are adhering to physical, distancing and hygienic report requirements.

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These social distancing requirements include travel to and from a jobsite time spent on the job site to include lunch and breaks on the jobsite. We want to ensure that all Baulkham County residents, whether on essential business or not, maintain their distance of six feet.

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Is moving an essential function?

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Yes, moving is an essential function if you haven't yet scheduled your move and you can delay it that is recommended, but if not, please ensure you're doing your very best to avoid close contact and sanitizing common touch surfaces if you are moving to another county or state or you're, moving to Buncombe from another jurisdiction, you need to quarantine yourselves for two weeks upon arrival at your new location.

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Do you feel that people are complying with the local declaration or do they need to do better?

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For the most part, the community is complying very well and I want to take a moment to thank all the individuals, businesses and organizations that are doing so we get through this. We protect ourselves best when we work together as a team.

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There are some who are either not taking this situation seriously or think our measures are too extreme and I say to them. This isn't about you, it's about our most vulnerable. Our response is only as effective as the level of buy-in from the community so start taking. This seriously follow the guidance of medical experts and public health officials and be a team player.

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Finally, what is the expectation of how Kovan 19 cases might progress in Buncombe County? Have we been lucky or is it to stay home declaration? That's keeping what we've seen so far to a handful of cases? Is there an expectation only we might see a surge of cases in regards to what the state seen so, yes, social distancing works. It is a specific strategy proven by data to severely lessen the impact of covin 19 by minimizing the opportunity for close contact encounters right now. It's the best tool we have in our mitigation toolbox.

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Some of the better and more compelling data models that we are tracking are coming from the Institute for Health, metrics and evaluation. You can look at them for yourselves at WWF data org.

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They have models specific to North Carolina, which show that our peak use of resources is projected to occur on April 22nd in three weeks.

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It's also important to understand that when we talk about our peak that doesn't mean a day and then we start going downhill, it's a peak phase and that phase may last between four to ten weeks, where we have our resources, most strained and quite possibly overwhelmed.

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So you've heard me repeatedly talk about our critical window for a proactive response. That window is coming to a close. That's why these enhanced mitigation measures, we've enacted, are so critical right now we have to flatten that initial spike of cases so that we don't overwhelm our healthcare systems in the coming weeks and it takes every single one of us working together to flatten that spike. Thank you.

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Good afternoon my name is Dan Leroy I'm, the president and CEO of United Way Nashville in Buncombe County. First of all, let me say how grateful I am to our leaders of the city and the county for their extraordinary leadership during this time, I feel both very lucky and very proud to call Asheville and Buncombe County my home and, as on behalf of United Way I, want to say how honored we are to have several members of our team working directly with the county and other partners as part of the Emergency Operations Center.

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This has given our organization an opportunity to leverage our diverse network of people and partners and our nearly 100 years of experience in relationships in Buncombe County to contribute to the community response.

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In many ways this is what we're built for. This is what United Way is all about. It's about connecting people to resources, the resources they need to get through the most difficult times and to support community organizations who are working on the frontlines with our most vulnerable neighborhoods and communities. This is what we do every day.

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Over the past few weeks, County staff members have begun to receive an influx of requests from groups looking for bulk quantities of things like food cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment. At the same time, many of these same staff, our fielding, calls from businesses and community groups who are offering to supply some of these same resources.

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In order to manage this overwhelming number of these complimentary requests in a coordinated manner. We're announcing today, a partnership between Buncombe County, the United Way of Asheville Buncombe County and the Asheville area Chamber of Commerce to get these vital resources to where they're most needed throughout our community through something called in-kind contributions.

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Our United Way has already established a volunteer Center. It's called hands-on, Asheville Buncombe, it's a platform where individual community members who would like to serve can be matched to organizations that desperately need those volunteers. Throughout this crisis, as of today, the same site is serving as a platform and we've added the capability to match in-kind donations of these critical items that are in the highest demand to schools and to community organizations and to local agencies that desperately need those resources.

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The website is hands-on, Ashville org again, that's hands-on, Asheville dot, org, there's no punctuation. If you click on the kovat 19 response link you'll find buttons both forgiving and for receiving these on in-kind contributions.

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Let me also state that if a need arises for resources and there's no business or organization that steps up to fill it, our team will work with the folks at the chamber of commerce and the county to coordinate a strategic appeal to local businesses and to send out an area-wide call to action through the media and again that website is hands-on. Asheville org before I get off here, I want to be clear about two things.

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First of all, this is really about a process that matches the needs of community service organizations and donations from groups and businesses. It will not serve to connect individuals or allow those individuals to request goods.

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Any individual looking for resources should call United, Way, two-one-one information, referral line to get any to get connected to any number of Health, and you services needs again. This free and confidential service is available in any language twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, just dial 2-1-1.

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Also none of the three partners behind this effort. The United Way the chamber nor Buncombe County have the space to store donations. So please do not drop off materials to any of these locations. The hands on site that I talked about will match organizations and from there the groups will coordinate their own drop off or pick up arrangements once again. We're so grateful to have the opportunity to work with our partners at the county and the chamber to provide this kind of support for our community.

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If you would like more information about United Way and our response to the Cova 19 crisis, I encourage you to visit our website, that's United, Way, ABC org and follow us on social media. Thank you very much.

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This concludes our community update. The next community update will be live streamed via Facebook live on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. that's April 2nd. We encourage you to get accurate information on Kovan 19 from sites like the CDC, the state of North Carolina's koban 19 page in Buncombe counties, kovat 19, page Buncombe, County, dot, org has links to the Cova 19 page as well as information about one Buncombe and lots of other helpful information about county operations that are valuable to people in Buncombe County.

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