After more than two years of masking up and staying 6 feet apart as the world battled a pandemic, it seems life is making yet another shift back to a new normal as the rate of positive COVID-19 cases slows.
Masks are no longer required in Brown County Schools, water fountains are running again in the Brown County Office Building and plastic barriers at cash registers are coming down in local businesses.
But is the pandemic actually over?
“The pandemic is moving towards a more ‘endemic’ status which would mean, in a way, that we will learn to live with this virus and maintain it at a baseline level,” said Corey Frost, the county’s Emergency Health Preparedness Coordinator.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the “endemic level” of a disease is the “amount of a particular disease that is usually present in a community.”
The virus is not gone completely, but Frost said the community now has the tools needed to protect themselves and others.
“There are many tools in the toolbox now to protect oneself. Vaccine and testing are readily available,” Frost said.
“We know we can protect the more vulnerable populations using these tools, which would include social distancing when necessary, staying home when sick or symptomatic — or at least staying away from people —, sanitizing and good hygiene.”
Earlier this month, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law legislation to end Indiana’s public health emergency and limit employer vaccine mandates, shortly after state lawmakers sent the measure to his desk.
House Bill 1001 cleared the way for the end of the statewide public health emergency related to COVID-19 because it contains administrative language that Holcomb had said he would need to stop extending his executive order. Holcomb signed a new order March 3, effectively ending the health emergency. It had been renewed on a monthly basis for nearly two years.
In February, Superintendent Emily Tracy announced that wearing masks in Brown County Schools buildings will now be optional following a revision to state contact tracing and quarantine requirements for schools. In the February and March meetings of the Brown County School Board of Trustees Tracy reported a slowing of the rate of positive cases for both students and staff in the school buildings.
Schools are also no longer required to conduct contact tracing or report positive cases to the state department of health. But school districts are still expected to continue assisting local health departments by notifying them of an outbreak or cluster of positive cases in a school.
As another sign of a shift out of the pandemic response, at the March 15 Brown County Board of Health meeting Frost said that the health department worked on completing a report for an after-action review that will be evaluated by an outside agency. The department’s report included both strengths and weaknesses of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic locally.
Once the data is evaluated then an improvement action plan will be developed including anything that needs to be done to correct identified weaknesses.
“Establishing at the onset of the pandemic a command structure that would work, and the creation of the Community Organizations Active in a Disaster (COAD) were some of the big successes in the response,” Frost said.
“The members of the COAD, including the Democrat, were extremely important in disseminating a consistent message to the community, setting up many food drives, establishing a help line to answer questions and lead people to a solution or just be a calming voice on the other end of the line had a positive impact to the citizens Brown County.”
The group of COAD volunteers started meeting on the weekend of March 15, 2020 when it was apparent that COVID-19 was spreading and would soon affect Brown County. Members continued to meet at least monthly, sometimes each week, either in person or virtually, with most meetings happening via Zoom.
COAD has included representatives from county government, town government, the YMCA, the Red Cross, veterans groups, volunteer fire departments, township trustees, the chamber of commerce, the tourism industry, the state park, the health and emergency management departments, the community foundation, Brown County Schools, law enforcement, TRIAD and other senior aid organizations, God’s Grace ministry, the mental health field, Purdue Extension and the newspaper.
By the start of 2021, COAD had organized 18 pop-up food pantries in the county, plus 13 other food distributions, distributing 150,000 pounds of food. In addition, 1,900 hot meals were delivered between March and May of 2020.
So far this year it appears the need for food has also slowed as less pop-up food pantries have been scheduled in 2022.
Back to blue
Towards the end of 2021, the state began to see another surge of positive COVID-19 cases as omicron variant converged with an ongoing delta surge in the state. Brown County had remained in the red advisory level on the Indiana State Department of Health’s spread metric map, which is the highest of four, since the beginning of January when positive cases began to increase. It was moved to the “orange” level in mid-February.
As of last week, the county joined most of the state in the “blue” advisory level, which is the lowest of four.
ISDH added a “youth” dashboard to help school corporations track transmission rates by state districts in specific age group. Brown County is one of seven counties in District 8 on that dashboard. There is also a vaccine tab that can further breakdown vaccination data by county for the 5- to 19-year-old ages, Frost said.
According to the youth vaccination dashboard, between 30 to 35% of the county’s 5- to 19-year old population have received their dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
From March 3 to 17, the county reported only three new positive COVID-19 cases. The percentage of all residents who are now partially vaccinated continues to remain around 57 percent.
As a response to the surge of positive cases at the beginning of the year, the health department extended hours, including time on Saturday, to do more free, community testing for COVID-19.
Last week, Frost said the department continues to do about two to three tests a day and one to two vaccines per day. He said the department is planning to scale back testing hours to three days a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 to 11:45 a.m. — within the next week or two. Vaccines will continue to be available five days a week from 1 to 3:30 p.m.
The department received nearly $58,000 to pay for vaccine and testing locally in 2021. At the end of 2021 there was $53,673 left in that fund and that money will continue to be spent until it is gone, office administrator Judy Hess.
During the pandemic, the health department received nearly $250,000 in funding from the federal CARES Act. At the end of 2021 there was still $136,065.57 remaining of that funding that the department will keep in reserves for future responses to COVID-19 if needed. Money was mostly spent on personnel services, equipment and rent or leases, according to the department’s annual report for 2021.
The entire report is available online at www.in.gov/localhealth/browncounty/.
