Should Idaho lift coronavirus stay-home order? Not until we have better testing, data

Idaho Gov. Brad Little is scheduled to hold a press conference Wednesday to discuss his coronavirus 21-day stay-home order, which is scheduled to expire Wednesday.

Much speculation has been offered about whether Little will lift the order, extend it or offer some sort of hybrid, and he has been pressured strongly from both sides.

With the number of new cases of the coronavirus dropping in Idaho and the number of total cases appearing to level out, it might be tempting to declare “mission accomplished,” lift the order and return to life as normal.

After all, we all want to return to normal.

But we can’t forget that COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus, is still highly contagious and deadly. It quickly raged through Blaine County, which was the first county to shelter in place in the early days of the outbreak in Idaho. Blaine County has had five deaths and 458 total cases. Ada County has had 530 cases and nine deaths. In total, Idaho has had some 1,455 cases and 33 deaths — all while under the stay-home order. Monday alone saw six new deaths reported.

The Statesman editorial board fears a blanket “reopening” of the state, lifting the stay-home order and returning to “business as usual” will simply provide an opportunity for the coronavirus to spread like wildfire.

That’s because the conditions needed to prevent an outbreak still aren’t in place, even with the stay-at-home order: increased capacity for testing and solid data to make informed decisions.

As the Idaho Statesman reported Monday, while other states, such as Oregon and Florida, are doing a better job of collecting and reporting such data as symptoms, preexisting medical conditions and tracing contacts for those with confirmed cases of COVID-19, Idaho is struggling to keep up. Idaho’s decentralized, less-regulation approach seems to be faltering in this case. The state is leaving much of the work up to the seven health districts, which appear to be woefully understaffed for the task. Even tracking the number of cases on a daily basis is proving to be a challenge.

Epidemiologists say states should focus on tracing and notifying close contacts of patients, and providing education and support for patients and contacts. However, the Central District Health and South Central Public Health District departments in Idaho recently told the Statesman that the caseload has reached a point where they no longer can even reach out to all contacts of known cases in hard-hit areas like Ada and Blaine counties.

There’s also a long backlog of cases for epidemiologists to get through, said Niki Forbing-Orr, the spokeswoman for Health and Welfare. Some patients are hard to reach — or even unconscious, if they’re on ventilators. So while Oregon tracks and releases more granular information and status reports to the public on a regular basis, Idaho is releasing limited data.

Crush the Curve, a private collaboration of several local businesses headed by former emergency room physician and prominent real estate developer Tommy Ahlquist, is a promising start to introduce widespread testing in Idaho. But it’s only a start, something that got up and running in the past few days.

Further, as Cynthia Sewell of the Idaho Statesman reported Monday, even though $1.25 billion in federal relief money has been earmarked for Idaho, a newly seated committee that will determine how to spend that money is awaiting guidance from the federal government on how it can and should spend it. At the very least, we should not be reopening Idaho for business without having a solid plan in place on how to target that money to help ensure prevention of another outbreak. Part of the plan needs to include bolstering the staffs of the state Health and Welfare Department and the seven health districts during this time of crisis.

The last thing we want is for the sacrifices and struggles we’ve made as a state under the stay-home order for the past three weeks to go completely to waste if we return to business as usual.

At this point in the game, the pieces are not in place to instill confidence that we’re prepared to effectively defeat COVID-19. We need widespread testing, the capacity for processing those tests, reliable data and the ability to trace contacts of those infected.

Barring those assurances and a solid strategy moving forward, we urge Gov. Little to stay the course until we have a clear path to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19 in Idaho.

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 11:39 AM.