Dr. Frankovich Comments on New California Covid Regulations for Employers, Currently Two Patients in ICU in Humboldt, and Halloween Safety

Humboldt County’s Public Health Officer Dr. Teresa Frankovich has been answering questions since the stay-at-home orders were instituted on a two question per media outlet roughly two times a week basis. The Emergency Operations Center takes the questions, and staff reads them on camera for their response. The resulting video, called a Media Availability, is then provided to news outlets at the end of the day.

Here are some of the main points covered in the August 21st Media Availability session with a summary of answers from Dr. Teresa Frankovich.

Question by North Coast News:  Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills to protect essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under AB 685, employers must report an outbreak to local public health officials and they must also report known cases to employees who may have been exposed to COVID-19 within one business day. He also signed AB 1867, legislation that immediately ensured access to paid sick leave for every California employee.  How could these bills impact the pandemic here locally?

Answer by Dr. Frankovich: 

Well, I’m happy to see the legislation. I think it really just helps to create some fail-safe mechanisms around case investigations, so you can imagine that in a county where, because of the number of cases and how much they’re dealing with in terms of volume, that they may not be able to do as aggressive case investigation as we’re able to do here to date. And so having that other…way in which a health department can get information about cases occurring in the workplace is particularly helpful. And so in our instance, typically when we identify a case obviously we’re talking to that case quickly, we’re finding out where they work and then we’re able to, you know, look at the workplace as a place of possible transmission pretty quickly. But it’s great that there’s that, again that reassurance that if for some reason you know, we weren’t able to reach someone or they weren’t forthcoming about their employment, there is another mechanism for us to learn about that situation potentially. So I think that’s great. And the fact that employers have to let their employees know if they’re aware of a concern is also reassuring for employees. The last piece of this, about paid sick leave, I think is really important because we want people to be willing to come forward when they’re sick, get tested when they’re sick, and stay home when they’re sick, and so having that assurance of continued pay is really important to families. So I’m thankful for that new legislation. 

2 mins 15 sec in:   

Question by North Coast News:  Looking at the daily testing data, the number of tests given daily has dropped below 200 a day this week. In previous weeks, testing was approaching almost 350 and higher per day.  What is contributing to this decrease?

Answer by Dr. Frankovich: 

So for a number of weeks there we had a really marked increase in demand in terms of testing. We had just multiple things occurring including, for instance, you know HSU coming back in session and doing a lot of testing there. We had infections in health care workers in two different skilled nursing facilities and when that occurs we have to accelerate our surveillance testing and test the entire facility, patients and residents, weekly. So it puts again a huge increase in the testing volume needed within our lab. In fact because of what’s being seen across skilled nursing facilities across the state, the state recently just put out guidance that says these facilities have to test their entire workforce weekly, as opposed to a little more spread out as we had been doing. And so we will be needing to help them comply with that and so our volume is likely to tick up again as well. I do want to take the opportunity to point out though that in this instance for us locally, we had no secondary cases of COVID in residents of our skilled nursing facilities which is amazing. The facilities did a wonderful job and our public health team worked with them on that extensively as well, so kudos to everyone. 

3 mins 55 sec in:   

Question by North Coast News:  This week, Eureka City Schools made a decision to keep classes online, and then some in the public lashed back in protest since they’re allowed to reopen.  Does our local health department believe all local schools are fit to go back to in-person instruction, and how do you weigh the impact to physical health against the impact to students’ mental health?

Answer by Dr. Frankovich: 

Well, I think I’d be pretty safe in saying we’d all like to see children back in school, overall I think that’s the optimal learning environment for them. That being said, our sort of message all along has been that in order for schools to open, they need to be able to do so safely under COVID guidelines and we recognize that not all schools have the capacity to do that because of their particular facility. We also recognize that the the desires in communities are different in terms of what the parents are looking for, whether it’s distance learning or on-site learning, and there’s also different capacities in the schools for the ability to offer robust distance and on-site learning at the same time and sometimes this is dependent on grade level as well and so because we know that not all families are going to choose on-site learning. So I think there are a lot of factors that come into play in every school’s decision about whether they can or cannot operate on-site, but we want to be supportive of them and we’ll help with testing and whatever else we can do for schools that are opening to on-site instruction.

5 mins 30 sec in:   

Question by Redheaded Blackbelt:  Currently, the data noted for Hospitals By County (data.ca.gov/dataset/Covid-19-hospital-data/resource/) shows that Humboldt has 3 COVID patients in hospital beds. Would you agree that the public’s general perception of the seriousness of the illness, as well as of the consequences of inaction in terms of prevention, is shaped and informed by what information is presented by experts and officials?  If that is the case, do you think that giving the public a better idea of the current hospitalization rates would increase the public‘s awareness of the illness, thereby contributing to better public adherence of masking policies, or physical distancing, as examples of individual ways to mitigate spread of disease?  

Answer by Dr. Frankovich:

Well, I like us being able to have information at our fingertips to make decisions. I think we’ve been trying to message really consistently and very frequently about what our current disease status is in the county and we do do an ongoing tally of hospitalizations that’s evident really easily on our dashboard, so you’re able to see if our hospitalizations have increased today by one or two or whatever when you look at that dashboard.

The other thing I would say is that there is at the top of our dashboard a link to the state website, the hospitals all feed their data on their positive COVID patient, inpatients, their ICU COVID patients to the state and the state is actually making that available. In this instance I would point out the difficulty sometimes with data that we face, is that I will tell you that there are two patients currently hospitalized in our county for COVID. I think today the state website says three. My guess is this person may have pulled that data point off perhaps yesterday and so it it, you know it’s a moving target to make sure that we have an accurate number out there for the public on any given day, but I would encourage people who are interested in seeing a day-to-day count for ICU and regular hospital beds to just click on that link at the top of our dashboard and they can have that information right in hand for every county in the state.

7 mins 35 sec in:   

Question by Redwood News:  When it comes to the tier system laid out by the Governor, you’ve talked about what it takes to bump us up a level… on the flip side, can you talk a little more about what needs to happen for us to decrease/drop down a level and loosen more restrictions?

Answer by Dr. Frankovich: 

I think that’s a great question and a really nice positive focus on this. You know the next level down from us, the less restrictive tier, is yellow, we’re currently in orange and to be in yellow we would need to have basically a couple of things. We would need to have a case rate that was less than one per 100,000 that’s over seven days, a seven-day average with a seven-day lag. And on last measure we were 3.9 for the state. So we’re sandwiched here. If we are 4 for a couple of weeks we move into the red tier, more restrictive, if we can bring it under 1 then we move into the yellow which is less restrictive and I think better for all of us and so you know these aren’t, it doesn’t feel like a huge gap in numbers, but you know it is in terms of actual day-to-day cases, so what I would tell people is that all the measures that we’re talking about, you know the not gathering, the wearing masks, the social distancing all are the things that help us nudge those numbers down. We actually, I’m sure people are aware, over the last couple of days we’ve had just you know a small number of cases after a relatively big influx over the end of last week in the weekend. And I credit the measures everybody is taking with that the fact that we’ve been sort of able to sort of hold that line and also for our CD team, our investigative team which has been amazing and again these folks you know we staff this seven days a week, often times people are you know ten hours a day, they’re following up on these cases regardless of when they pop up in our electronic system or in our lab and quickly trying to isolate and quarantine individuals so we can contain spread, and it’s those measures, although labor intensive, together with the public efforts, that I think are making the difference and allowing us to be where we are. 

So I think if we all you know keep working on this and really adhere, I think obviously for most people the social piece has been one of the most difficult, but again we just recommend the things that we’ve been saying all along which is if you are going to mix with people outside your household it’s riskier just by doing that. If you do that, the safer ways to do that are small numbers of people, you know four to six people not 20, 30, 40, 50 people, to do it outside, to do it masked and distanced and you know using some of those features can help us minimize risk for additional spread of disease. 

10 mins 35 sec in:   

Question by Redwood News:  With Halloween getting closer, what do you think the holiday will look like this year? Does Public Health have guidance on how trick or treating can be done safely or other safe ways residents can celebrate? Can Halloween be done safely amid the Covid-19 pandemic?

Answer by Dr. Frankovich: 

So, it’s a good question and we do have a little bit of planning time here and we are talking to sort of local business community and cities to sort of, you know, try and think of ways that we might be able to offer something a little more structured that would be safer. Obviously door-to-door trick-or-treating across multiple households intuitively doesn’t  seem like a good idea and so but that’s obviously a big tradition for Halloween, so are there ways that we can operate more safely with Halloween this year? A few things that come to mind are obviously things that you can do with your household unit and within you know scavenger hunts or you know little trick-or-treating things within your house for treats to you know sort of get that feel for Halloween without being outside your home for that. 

Other things going out for instance to eat if there’s a restaurant that’s offering a Halloween kind of theme can be something people can share together and but you know we’ll as we get closer to the holiday we’ll offer some suggestions for families but I think it’s up to all of us to get creative about how can we minimize mixing and still sort of embrace the idea and some of the fun of the holiday. 

Community members with questions or concerns are encouraged to call 441-5000 for additional information.  

For the most recent state and national COVID-19 information, visit cdc.gov or cdph.ca.gov

 

Local information is available at the Humboldt County COVID-19 Data Dashboard: humboldtgov.org/dashboard, on Facebook @HumCoCOVID19, Instagram @HumCoCOVID19, Twitter @HumCoCOVID19, and Humboldt Health Alert humboldtgov.org/HumboldtHealthAlert

 

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48 Comments
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Guest
Guest
Guest
3 years ago

She rolled the dice and came up short. Some wanted her to retire under Obama. Will Thomas roll the dice too?

Screwed Sideways
Guest
Screwed Sideways
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest
tamala
Guest
tamala
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

Please talk to someone. You need help.

humboldturtle
Guest
humboldturtle
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

The dice-rolling around here is from a sheriff who seems to like Trump better than his own people.

Anon
Guest
Anon
3 years ago

Candy . That’s just what we need. <—sarcasm.

Insert long rant about stupidity of our "health" officials and our skewed priorities -here-.

Mike
Guest
Mike
3 years ago

just dress your kid up as a protestor, every media outlet has said that is completely safe.

I like stars
Guest
I like stars
3 years ago

Didn’t she quit a month ago?

Mike
Guest
Mike
3 years ago
Reply to  I like stars

Right?

Lone Ranger
Guest
Lone Ranger
3 years ago
Reply to  I like stars

That’s what I was thinking, must have checked into health insurance rates. Yep ,better stay on, wouldn’t want to have to pay that premium out of my ginormous nest egg I’ve accured with my inflated salary and crazy spending allowance.

You know
Guest
You know
3 years ago
Reply to  Lone Ranger

Forced out more like it, she didn’t quit on her own.

R. Hutson
Guest
R. Hutson
3 years ago
Reply to  I like stars

She sort of quit… She submitted a letter of resignation but stated that she would be staying on the job until they found a replacement.

Juanita
Guest
Juanita
3 years ago
Reply to  I like stars

Your comment/question is a perfect example of why school is NOT the optimum enviornment for learning. Reading comprehension is seriously lacking.

I like stars
Guest
I like stars
3 years ago
Reply to  Juanita

I didn’t know it was going to be on the test. If you were a better teacher, you would have highlighted what you seem to think is a key point.

Guest
Guest
Guest
3 years ago

Dr. Frankenstien, We know you get paid to lie to the people and push the fake Covert 19 agenda and finally people are realizing how much of a Scamdemic all this b.s is. I mean how can these so called experts keep talking out their a**es??? One article contradicts another article and they can’t keep it straight because lies and bullsh*t are hard to remember. They should all be charged with Crimes against Humanity when this all comes out in the wash that they have perpetrated the biggest hoax in modern times. What a crock of sh*t!!!!

Lone Ranger
Guest
Lone Ranger
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

She is still talking about weddings in July being super spreaders. They happened, and lots of them ,that was 2 months ago Doc, where are all the cases? Zero yesterday, 1 the day before , 2 the day before that. Where is this pandemic Doc? Keep talking about weddings that happened 2 months ago.

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
3 years ago
Reply to  Lone Ranger

It’s been only a few weeks since the 50 person event in sohum where dozens of people caught it. It’s still happening. You’re just ignoring it.

Also, have you considered the possibility that people are getting better at avoiding spreading it, because unlike you, they’re paying attention and following precautions? Mask usage is increasing, for example, and people are more aware of how bad large gatherings are, having seen what happened at others.

Maybe you should also look more than three days back? Because four days back we had 6 cases, before that 5, before that 8, 25 over one weekend,… but no, you’d rather intentionally mis-represent the numbers until they support your idiocy.

Lone Ranger
Guest
Lone Ranger
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

Hey Bush, you just did the same thing. You went back to our highest case days to support your own agenda. I don’t call it idiocy , I feel that term tries to make one feel superior. Have a nice day Tails.

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
3 years ago
Reply to  Lone Ranger

I went to the days immediately before the days you listed. The ones you should have included if you were trying to give an accurate representation of local case rates.

I like stars
Guest
I like stars
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

So far in Humboldt, 482 total cases. Don’t know exactly when they started, but mid-March is a ballpark. It is now past mid-September. That’s 6 months or approximately 180 days. The average number of cases per day would be higher than 2.5, but fewer than 3.

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

Do you think 200,000 dead Americans are a hoax?

Guest
Guest
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

No but damaging millions for decades in the name of 200,000 is. There’s a likelihood that things from rioting to rising homicide counts are due to the stress caused by impossible to enforce but frightening government orders in the name of public health . Unfortunately the responsibility for that will never be laid at the feet of the fearful because they will always fall back on their unprovable but virtuous and firm belief that any means intending to prevent the spread of disease is good and those that point out the collateral damage are stupid and meanies.

Lone Ranger
Guest
Lone Ranger
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

Do you think 79000 dead from the flu in 4 months is a hoax? The CDC has that number documented on it’s page. But let me guess, it’s an estimate or you have a link that discredits it. Just more ridiculousness.

steve adams
Guest
steve adams
3 years ago
Reply to  Lone Ranger

No. But did they isolate the virus load by serology in their post mortems? That should be a normal response. Has the coroner been asked?

As for the ICU patients. What are their symptoms and co morbidity? Are they intubated and on mechanical ventilators? (Who owns the ventilator company and who profits from the trading? U.S. Representatives?) Does the hospital have a hyperbaric chamber and has it ever been used for the respiratory distress or cytokine storm? What are the ICU patient’s chances if they follow a pandemic normal course of treatment vs. getting hyperbaric oxygen immediately? I read that in Mineola, NY, the Winthrop hospital did a randomized trial and was successful, in treating those symptoms that normally kill you, in 90% of the trial patients.

Do we have such treatment available? If not, why not? Why has the FDA dragged its feet on this? Who is funding alternative treatments? Where’s the patient choice that the private insurance industry always tells you they are so in favor of? Well? Where is it?

Crimestopper2
Guest
Crimestopper2
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

Anybody remember???- each year there are 180,000 US deaths due to doctors prescribing the wrong prescription to patients. Yep and that statistic isn’t used ever because we aren’t forced into wearing masks to PREVENT it!

Bushytails
Guest
Bushytails
3 years ago
Reply to  Crimestopper2

Having one cause of preventable deaths is not a reason to not try to stop other causes of preventable deaths. Also, if we had allowed covid to spread unchecked, infecting much of the population before we’d discovered treatments that reduce death rates, completely overloading hospitals, etc, we’d be way, way over 200,000 already.

P*** W***lies
Guest
P*** W***lies
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

You What is The Number One Prevention Doctors Prescribe Most, to eliminate all future suffering?

ABORTION.

It's All A Ride
Guest
It's All A Ride
3 years ago
Reply to  Bushytails

Tell me again why HCQ is not a valid therapy? The dosages used in trials were well over the well known, for decades, danger levels …

Anon
Guest
Anon
3 years ago
Reply to  Crimestopper2

88k people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. (That number excludes deaths from accidents ,another 15k)

AND the yearly total of alcohol-related deaths has more than doubled, from 1999 to 2017.

1 million dead from alcoholism every decade !

Who cares? Not the WHO.

Addressing preventable deaths is not the goal. If it actually were many aspects of our culture , and the world would be vastly different. 3.3 million deaths –a whopping 6% of all global deaths back in 2012 — were attributable to alcohol consumption!

Jim Brickley
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

Yeah well, there’s 200,000 dead folks, so there’s that!

Willie Bray
Guest
3 years ago

🕯🌳I see the knuckledraggers have the majority on this thread today.

Guest
Guest
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Willie Bray

Marshaling an Army of Strawmen in the name of Progress is always the choice of the confused.

You know
Guest
You know
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

Money seems to be more important than living, as long you aren’t dead.

Boomers Screwed America
Guest
Boomers Screwed America
3 years ago
Reply to  You know

You can’t live if you can’t make money and give the government their tribute of 1/3 of your income to tell you how to live your life. Boomer politics as usual is screwing America for generations to come!

Lone Ranger
Guest
Lone Ranger
3 years ago
Reply to  Willie Bray

Good morning Willie, are you being demeaning today. If we don’t agree with you , we are somehow less than you? Very disappointing.

Willie Bray
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Lone Ranger

🕯🌳It has nothing to do with agreeing with me it that most if you don’t agree with common sense or courtesy.

Jacoby Creek Beauty
Guest
Jacoby Creek Beauty
3 years ago
Reply to  Willie Bray

For real. Knuckle draggers. Lmbo

Swine
Guest
Swine
3 years ago
Reply to  Willie Bray

Kym insulted please delete thisncomment

Kym Kemp
Admin
3 years ago
Reply to  Swine

Insulting in groups is allowed. One could for instance say on a regular basis that liberalism is a mental disorder…

Mike
Guest
Mike
3 years ago
Reply to  Kym Kemp

I tried not to but I got to do it…. so liberalism is associated with white america and we all know it’s not possible for white people to experience any form of racism, but knuckle dragger refers to a time when humans were evolving from primates, and it’s been generally acknowledged that that era happened in Africa and the Middle East, where people then and now have a higher melanin content to their skin, so technically by 2020 standards the term “knuckledraggers” is racist because it Implies that people of darker skin color are less intelligent. Had to stretch for that one.

Willie Bray
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Mike

🕯🌳But I’m not caucasian.

Mike
Guest
Mike
3 years ago
Reply to  Willie Bray

Well, then according to 2020 outrage cancel culture you’re allowed to be a racist, so youre good.

Conundrum
Guest
Conundrum
3 years ago
Reply to  Mike

Funny, I usually picture a neanderthal … Seeing things as racially motivated is itself racist. Cancel culture is racist, lol

Lone Ranger
Guest
Lone Ranger
3 years ago
Reply to  Swine

Its cool Swine, Willie does the majority of the commenting, lmbo.

Doggo the commie ☺
Guest
Doggo the commie ☺
3 years ago

I think the caliber of thought expressed by many in this (and every) thread makes it clear that our school system is far from an optimal learning enviornment. I would wager that every commenter (or at the least, 90%) are a product of public school education. Prove me wrong☺

Willie Bray
Guest
3 years ago

🕯🌳Does that include you.👁👁

Willie Bray
Guest
3 years ago

🕯🌳But I guess liberals aren’t allowed to have foul mouths like the knuckledraggers have when they voice their opinions on liberals like a few have on this blog. Hmmmmmm. And what’s the difference between the WORDS knuckledraggers and liberals?

Big Bang
Guest
3 years ago

Relax, kiddies! Nov. 3rd about 10:00 pm local time and this whole shitshow will turn into a liberal meltdown cryfest… Can’t fucking wait.

Willie Bray
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Big Bang

🕯🌳Because of mail in voting results probably won’t be in until sometime in December. And what is the definition of a liberal? And what makes you think it won’t be the other way around?