County health officials agree ‘there’s still a long way to go’

Health officers from around the region on Tuesday commended the people from Washington for their commitment to social distancing, saying that it is starting to flatten the curve.

“We have continued to see a decrease in transmission of COVID-19, locally, which is wonderful,” said Jeff Duchin, health officer with Public Health – Seattle & King County.

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“The good news is that these findings showing decreased transmission validate our recent observation of decreasing cases over the last couple weeks,” echoed Dr. Chris Spitters, Snohomish Health District’s health officer.

“The good news is we’re not increasing by an exponential rate,” said Dr. L-T Chen, health officer with Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.

However, it’s not enough.

“I would like to see transmission suppressed further,” Duchin said, adding that he’s still not confident in the testing process, making it difficult to assess how people are becoming ill and determining trends.

While cases have plateaued in the past two weeks, the doctors are adamant that they would like to the see the level of transmission drop below 1 percent before easing restrictions to social distancing policies.

“With 30 cases per day, we could not do that level of contact notification and monitoring,” Spitters said. “It’s probably got to be substantially lower than that.”

More cases means health departments would need more contact tracers to be able to contact people with whom ill people may have come into contact with previously. Dr. Chen said they’re open to working with technologies like new apps from Apple, but there are also other low-tech tools, such as call centers, that lesser-trained staff can use to contact people.

“We’ll need several hundred contract tracers in Washington state, the majority of which in King County,” Duchin pointed out.

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Part of the difficulty is staffing. Duchin said health officials are working around the clock, and that a significant reason for flattening the curve is to prevent overwhelming the local health care system.

“I’d like to make sure our health care system is ready for a potential surge,” Duchin said, when considering relaxing social distancing measures in the future.

Not only that, but health care workers need to be able to reopen their services to more routine practices, such as elective surgeries, without being taxed. Additionally, they need the appropriate personal protective equipment.

In summary, Duchin, Chen, and Spitters say our efforts are promising, but there’s still a lot of work to do before letting up the restrictions and distancing measures that are in place now.

“It’s not realistic to expect a change in policy in at least a month,” Duchin said.

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