Idaho’s Central District to draft new coronavirus regulations, possibly close Ada gyms
As Ada County and Valley County continue to see their coronavirus caseload increase, along with fatalities, the Central District Health’s Board of Health met Tuesday to discuss several options to combat the spread.
Dr. Ted Epperly brought up the White House Coronavirus task force recommendations that were released last week, noting that Idaho is in the “red zone.”
The recommendations made by the task force include limiting social gatherings to 10 people and closing gyms in Ada County. The county that’s home to Boise and Meridian currently limits social gatherings to 50 people and gyms are open, as was originally allowed in Stage 3, which the board moved the county back to a few weeks ago.
Epperly asked CDH Director Russ Duke to draft language about limiting social gatherings to 10, or even 25 to meet in the middle, as well as possibly closing gyms.
As the announcement was made, CDH announced 186 new confirmed cases for Ada County, bringing its total to 7,780 on Tuesday. It also announced four new deaths, for a total of 70.
Valley County Commissioner Elt Hasbrouck, who sits on the Board of Health, asked for a draft to mandate masks in both public buildings and private businesses in his county. Hasbrouck said during the meeting that many businesses have been asking for a mask mandate, but owners feel as if they cannot be the ones to implement the restriction.
“I have business owners calling me, asking me to do this, so they don’t have to take the political heat for doing it,” he said.
The board did not vote on anything that was discussed Tuesday. The drafts of the new potential orders will be posted on the Central District Health website, with direction on where residents may submit comments before a meeting on Aug. 11.
Board member Rep. Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett, has voted against past orders for restrictions and said she doesn’t believe there is a set of standards on how to move in and out of the mandates. She said she doesn’t believe there are standards in place.
“We are continually trying to figure out how to put more mandates on people to get a moving target down,” she said.
In a heated response, Epperly struck back, saying he couldn’t “let that stand as stated.” He said the district has been very clear in following the Idaho Rebounds guidance.
“The data points are around syndromic data, around epidemiological data and around clinical data,” Epperly said. “For you to say that this has all been done without any data points for consideration is wrong. We’ve absolutely looked at data in all aspects of this.”
Blanskma fired back, saying he misrepresented what she was saying.
“What I am saying is we have not given the public an actual path into and out of these decisions that are being made,” Blanksma said.
Epperly said in response that he wanted to put out the data so that they didn’t have to continue to have this discussion.
“What we can do is to make sure we publicly address then what all of these data points are so that you won’t continue to say at every meeting what you continue to say,” Epperly told Blanksma. “... I’m clearly not sitting here making this up. This data is coming from data we have within our state, along with guidelines we’ve used consistently all the time.”
Ultimately, no decisions were made Tuesday. The next meeting will be held at 4 p.m. next Tuesday, Aug. 11.
