Idaho health care leader says schools shouldn’t open right now; Canyon to address masks
The positivity rate for coronavirus tests in Ada County is too high to safely reopen schools right now, a health care leader told the Central District Board of Health on Tuesday.
Primary Health Medical Group provides much of the testing in the Boise area, CEO David Peterman said. It has nearly 20 clinics in the Treasure Valley, with most of its testing performed in Ada County.
Primary Health has seen positivity rates around 15% each of the past four weeks with complete data, Peterman said, and he expects a similar result for the most recent week.
He also provided charts showing increased infections in children in recent weeks.
“My opinion is the positivity rate is too high for schools to open,” said Peterman, who also is a pediatrician.
He said that ideally the rate should drop back below 5% before schools open, but he’d settle for getting it below 10% with a downward trend.
The Boise School District is scheduled to begin classes Aug. 17 — less than four weeks away. The Caldwell School District delayed its Aug. 19 start by a week on Tuesday night.
Idaho set a new high for its 14-day moving average of new confirmed and probable cases Tuesday with 514 per day.
“This is just an enormous surge of cases — absolutely frightening,” Peterman said.
According to the charts Peterman showed the board:
▪ For July 5-16, the positive testing rate at Primary Health clinics was 13% or higher for all but one day. The outlier was at 10.7%.
▪ Primary Health saw a positivity percentage below 5% for nine straight weeks from April 5 through June 6, with a low of 1% in mid-May. That number went up to 7% for one week and has been around 15% for each of the past four weeks with complete results. Peterman expects the July 12-18 week to finish with a similar percentage.
▪ Positive tests among children and older adults have increased recently. Primary Health had reported only a handful of positives among children until the week of June 21, when it received 11 positives. That grew to 21, 43 and 50 in the ensuing weeks. “It’s a very worrisome number,” Peterman said.
Since June 1, the positivity rate for children 12 to 17 years old has been 11.7%. It’s nearly 9% for children younger than 12.
Similarly, positives in the 60-plus age group have jumped from 8 to 19 to 32 to 36 in recent weeks. “This leads to the admissions to the hospital and this is the most concerning,” Peterman said.
The board didn’t take any action after Peterman’s presentation, but members discussed tweaking the Ada County mask ordinance as soon as next week to clarify how it applies to schools. Board member Dr. Ted Epperly mentioned the possibility of including language requiring the masks in schools even when social distancing is achievable.
“In other words, it should be masking in schools at all times,” Epperly said.
Central District Health previously moved Ada County to Stage 3 of the state’s reopening plan, and closed bars on June 22 and issued a countywide mask order July 14.
Still, Ada County has averaged 180.6 new confirmed cases per day in July, including a record 345 on Saturday. The county averaged fewer than four cases per day during the first week of June.
Peterman and Epperly worry what will happen when the COVID-19 cases mix with traditional cold and flu cases in schools in the fall. What will schools be like when nobody knows which runny noses and fevers are COVID-19 and which are the common cold, Epperly asked.
“There will not be enough testing equipment,” Peterman said. “It is so important to get the positivity rate down today. And the second part, the schools have to have mapped out what they’re going to do in all the scenarios that you just described. … Otherwise, yes, I predict chaos.”
Canyon County could get mask guidance
Southwest District Health’s Board of Health plans to meet at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Canyon County Courthouse after twice canceling planned meetings because of security concerns.
The agenda includes a “recommendation to wear a face covering when the SWDH COVID-19 Health Alert Level is at or above Yellow (Low) in public areas where physical distancing of at least 6 feet between non-household members is not possible.” The board also will consider recommendations to limit the density of people at events at Yellow or above, and suspend visitation to “older adult living and correctional facilities” when new cases are detected within the facility or when the alert is at Red (High).
However, the agenda says the board won’t consider a mask requirement.
“The agenda has been simplified from earlier this week to dispel public speculation about the Board of Health’s intent to impose a mandatory mask order,” the agenda says.
The county statuses in the alert system haven’t been released yet.
Southwest District Health’s reluctance to impose a mask requirement or other restrictions in Canyon County was brought up by multiple speakers during the CDH meeting, including Ada County Commissioner Diana Lachiondo.
Lachiondo suggested that any further restrictions in Ada County perhaps wouldn’t provide the desired result without similar action in Canyon, and that such action could be “unfair” to Ada businesses.
Canyon County has reported at least 100 new cases 10 of the past 11 days, with a high of 269 on July 15.
“Central District Health cannot do this alone,” Lachiondo said. “Our health systems are all intertwined. … Absent our fellow neighboring county taking any mitigation efforts … I don’t think we’d get where we’d need to from the health system perspective. … It’s very frustrating and concerning to me, given what we’re seeing, and hopefully we’ll start to see some, perhaps, different movement next door.”
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
