MARION — Marion County health officials say the cessation of a major outbreak at a local nursing care facility is one reason for a dramatic decrease in coronavirus cases over the past two weeks.
"We don't have any current outbreaks," Marion County Health Commissioner Traci Kinsler said during an interview on Friday. "We don't have anything (as of Aug. 28) that's got me worried that we're going to trend upward because we're in the middle of an outbreak. We don't have any nursing home outbreaks or outbreaks in other places."
The Ohio Public Health Advisory System (OPHAS) reported Thursday that Marion County is now at public emergency Level 1, which means there is active exposure and spread. Level 1 is signified by the color yellow on the statewide advisory system map.
According to the latest OPHAS statistics, Marion County's new cases per 100,000 residents now stands at 39.94, down from 69.13 cases on Aug. 20 and 101.39 cases on Aug. 13. The county was listed at Level 3 for three consecutive weeks prior to Aug. 20.
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Kinsler said the dramatic decrease is due to what she hopes is the end of a major outbreak at local nursing care facility Community Care and Rehabilitation.
"The outbreak at Community Care and Rehab is winding down and that's what actually allowed us to go down to yellow (Level 1)," Kinsler said. "When we had all those cases over a handful of days a couple of weeks ago, that's what pushed us into red (Level 3). Those cases are trending downward. We've only seen one or two cases (a day) coming in over the last couple of weeks."
As of Aug. 28, there were five active cases reported at nursing care facilities in Marion County. Community Care and Rehabilitation reported three cases (1 resident, 2 staff members), while Harding Pointe and Presidential each reported one current case.
Kinsler said the massive decrease in the number of current cases is good news, especially with local schools starting class this week.
"Not having any outbreaks in the community has set us up for the kids to be able to go back to school," she said. "That's what we want; for the kids to be able to go back to school and stay there. That means keeping outbreaks down, keeping our case count down, is going to be what keeps our kids in school. ... But I feel like it's a good plan to have the first nine weeks (of classes) hybrid (part in-person, part online) because it allows us to see how the plans are working and if we need to tweak them before we send an entire population back to school."
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On Friday morning, all of the superintendents in Marion County met with Kinsler and other Marion Public Health officials to discuss back-to-school plans, including handling crowds at athletic events. She said Director of Environmental Health Tyler Pigman has been working with local districts regarding athletics.
"I think they have good plans," Kinsler said. "They're giving people tickets to come into the games. But what we're worried about most is people who don't have a ticket, who are showing up to congregate and try to get a view of the game or make it a social gathering for kids to show up at the school. We don't want people to do that.
"We want to keep football and other games going. We want to keep schools open," she added. "It takes all of us to be able to do that. So, we want to be respectful of the rules and be grateful for the fact that we're able to have sports. We certainly don't want to push it to the point where we have to shut things down because of outbreaks due to people not following the rules."
Kinsler explained the process by which Marion Public Health will help local school districts track positive diagnoses of coronavirus, should they occur.
"We should see the case in our disease reporting system as soon as the (testing) lab posts it," Kinsler said. "We'll see it first, but the school may know that somebody's being tested or out waiting for a test result. After we see the positive case come up in our system, we'll make contact with the school. If it's a student, we'll get a seating of chart of kids around them and figure out who was in close contact with them.
"Then we'll go from there with our investigation and determine who needs to be quarantined. We'll also work with the family of person who tests positive to see who they were in contact with outside of school that might need to be quarantined."
eacarter@marionstar.com
@AndrewACCarter
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