Task force to begin working through how to reopen Whatcom from coronavirus shutdown
A task force will meet as early as next week to begin working through how and when to reopen businesses that have been closed since last month in efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, the Whatcom County Health Department said in a briefing on Monday, April 20.
Erika Lautenbach, director of the Whatcom County Health Department, said public health officials want to provide support and assistance to businesses so they can reopen safely and feel confident that they can keep their employees and their customers safe.
She announced plans for the task force as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the county continues to slow, indicating that the first wave of infections have likely peaked, public health officials said.
“Now is the time that we have an opportunity to plan for that and to be a partner with our businesses and our business associations in rebuilding our economy,” Lautenbach said during a briefing that was conducted online.
There were a total of 206 Whatcom County residents who tested positive in the two weeks at the end of March and the beginning of April.
For the two weeks ending Saturday, April 18, there were a total of 49 confirmed cases, with 11 of those reported last week, according to data on the health department’s website.
On Monday, the health department reported one new confirmed case and one death of someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
So far, there have been a total of 278 confirmed cases in Whatcom County and 27 deaths.
Lautenbach said the health department’s goal is to control and minimize the spread of COVID-19 but also to ensure that people can get back to work.
“How can we as a community work through those challenges together?” Lautenbach said.
Toward that end, her department has asked the county’s Public Health Advisory Board to convene a task force that will have businesses and employees from a number of sectors to work through questions about reopening and some of the barriers involved in doing so, Lautenbach said.
The task force also would include essential businesses that were allowed to remain open during Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-home order that are “demonstrating best practices,” she said.
The advisory board agreed on Friday, April 17, to convene the task force, Lautenbach said.
The statewide stay-at-home order and bans on public gatherings to keep the pandemic from spreading — starting in March and lasting through May 4, for now — have pummeled the economy, including in Whatcom County where job losses have led to a surge in filings for unemployment.
About 18% of Whatcom County residents who worked in February don’t have jobs, according to the most recent unemployment claims.
That, in turn, is expected to hit hard the budgets of local governments, which are losing revenue from taxes while spending millions of dollars to respond to the public health crisis.
Inslee’s next steps as that May 4 date approaches might preclude some Whatcom County businesses from opening, including the governor’s decision on the size of gatherings that may be allowed, Lautenbach acknowledged.
“This isn’t going to be a one size fits all,” she said.
Although no decision has been made, Lautenbach said examples of how a business could reconvene might be a restaurant with half as much seating so that customers can spread out to maintain social distancing or ordering being done digitally so there are fewer interactions.
Inslee has banned dine-in seating at restaurants but has allowed takeout orders.
The governor said last week that reopening the economy statewide depends on a continued flattening of the curve of the COVID-19 outbreak and that such efforts would be phased in. They would depend, in part, on having enough testing and contact tracing in place when it comes time to consider the May 4 stay-at-home order, he said.
Contact tracing involves tracking down others who have come into contact with someone sick with COVID-19, and it is believed that tens of thousands more public health workers will be needed to do the work in order to reopen states that have issued stay-at-home orders.
In Whatcom County, health department employees are handling case investigation and contact tracing.
“We have trained additional staff on this, in case they are needed in the future. There may be a need to hire additional staffing, but we have not begun to do that yet,” said Claudia Murphy, spokesperson for Whatcom Unified Command, the multi-governmental agency that’s directing local pandemic response.
What’s done at the Whatcom County level will depend on the state, Murphy told The Bellingham Herald.
“The state Department of Health and partners are actively exploring options to help contain spread and prevent a second surge. This may include widespread use of testing, followed by intensive case and contact investigation and monitoring for positive cases and contacts, and subsequent isolation or quarantine,” Murphy said.
“We are awaiting further information about the state plans, and how those plans dovetail with local needs. This may include increasing staff capacity for contact tracing and monitoring.”
