How Whatcom is spending millions on the Heath Department in the COVID-19 fight
Whatcom County’s Health Department has received an additional $4.5 million in CARES Act funds and recently has hired nurses and an epidemiologist and is hiring more staff with the pandemic relief funds, administered through the state Department of Health.
Council members authorized spending requests related to that money at the Sept. 29 meeting, Deputy Executive Tyler Schroeder told The Bellingham Herald in an email.
Because the CARES money will be reimbursed by the federal government under the $2.2 trillion stimulus package that Congress passed in March, adding new employees avoids conflict with a countywide hiring freeze enacted in the face of declining revenues from the economic downturn, Schroeder said.
Reimbursements are retroactive to pandemic-related expenses incurred since March 27, and must be spent by the end of the year, Lautenbach said.
“We are working on a very tight timeline to get these monies out to the community,” she told the council at a Committee of the Whole meeting.
This new $4.5 million will:
▪ Help reimburse Health Department salaries and overtime.
▪ Help pay temporary staff.
▪ Provide protective equipment for staff.
▪ Support behavioral health and social-services providers.
▪ Keep businesses informed about health and safety practices.
As part of the CARES money, the Health Department is asking for the county to fund two full-time public-health nurses and a communications specialist for COVID-19 response, said Amy Cloud, spokeswoman for Whatcom Unified Command, the multi-governmental agency that’s coordinating local pandemic response.
“The nurses would assist in providing support and symptom monitoring for residents in isolation and quarantine. That number varies, but today alone is 322 people,” Cloud told The Herald in a Sept. 30 email.
Cloud said the Health Department must make daily contact by having a nurse call those in quarantine who report symptoms and help them get tested for COVID-19; provide health-care support or hospital services if their symptoms worsen; and conduct discharge interviews at the end of isolation/quarantine.
A communication specialist would allow current staff working in other divisions of public health to return to their work, said Cloud, who is a city of Bellingham employee temporarily assigned to unified command’s Joint Information Center.
Epidemiologist Andy Ross started the week of Sept. 21, Cloud said.
Ross most recently was an environmental health specialist with Skagit County Public Health, where he co-wrote a report for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that chronicled a significant early outbreak of COVID-19.
He also worked as regional epidemiologist for a four-county region in northwest Washington, was project manager for the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and epidemiologist for the state Department of Health, Cloud said.
Schroeder said the Health Department has hired several temporary workers using CARES funds, so they aren’t subject to the countywide hiring freeze.
All told, the county has hired with CARES money a temporary volunteer coordinator who oversees 19 volunteers, six temporary public health nurses, four temporary case and contact investigators, a temporary communications coordinator, an epidemiologist, and a temporary emergency preparedness specialist.
In addition, two community health workers are on loan from Unity Care Northwest to assist people in isolation and quarantine by providing items like groceries, rental support, and other help, Schroeder said.
Some positions are funded only until the end of the year through the CARES Act and some are a combination of CARES money and other funds that extend into 2021, he said.
Officials also want to hire four Western Washington University work-study students for case and contact tracing, four more temporary case and contact Investigators, temporary clerical staff and possibly others, Schroeder said.
WWU will pay 75% of the students’ salaries.
Grants from COVID-19 Box In The Virus and the CDC’s Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Disease will fund the county’s portion of their salaries, according to a memo from Lautenbach.
Funding for that program was approved Tuesday, Oct. 13.
