Wayne health commissioner says goal is getting back to yellow
Nick Cascarelli, the health commissioner for the Wayne County Health Department, said Wayne County was moved to the orange indicator for COVID-19 in late July. “That means that over a two-week period we had more than 50 cases per 100,000 population,” he said. “It’s no longer just in congregate settings.”
Cascarelli said this reflects a change in the course of the disease in Wayne County from earlier on in the pandemic. “What this means is that now we have community spread. It’s not just in nursing homes anymore, like it was at first,” he said.
Cascarelli said what will help the county get back to yellow is no secret. “As we’ve been saying all along, wear a mask, wash your hands thoroughly and often, maintain social distancing, especially avoiding crowds, and stay home if you are sick,” he said.
Cascarelli said it will take a community effort to affect the county’s outcomes. “People might not be aware of it, but a vaccine by itself didn’t eradicate smallpox,” he said.
Cascarelli said the local health department has been busy since the advent of the pandemic in March. One of the first things the department did was to dedicate additional nursing staff to do contact tracing.
“We already had experience with contact tracing because we do some in the normal operations of the department,” Cascarelli said. “We do it in cases of communicative diseases that health-care providers must report within 24 hours.”
Cascarelli said the department tried not to cut down on services. “We just changed some things around to make it more manageable,” he said.
One thing the department did was close the public clinics it had and made them available by appointment only.
“The clinics are for important things like vaccinations, and that need doesn’t go away just because we’re in a pandemic,” Cascarelli said.
Cascarelli said he had to reassign some of the nursing staff to do additional contact tracing, which includes talking to a patient to identify people they had been around and possibly might have infected.
“It’s important to quarantine these individuals to slow the spread of the disease,” Cascarelli said. “Occasionally, people are a little hard to convince to cooperate on this, but they need to know we are just trying to keep everyone safe.”
Cascarelli said he views education about the virus as one of the most important functions he serves and that dispelling myths is one of his priorities.
“So many people just get their information from Facebook or other unreliable sources,” Cascarelli said. “I really wish they’d just call us if they have questions. We’re not here to mislead anyone; we’ll tell them the truth.”
One thing that seems to be an area of contention is mask wearing, Cascarelli said. “It is simple physics. It is a barrier and will stop a lot of the virus that is shed. This is why surgeons wear masks,” he said. “It should not be a political issue; it is purely a health issue.”
Cascarelli said entire businesses have had to shut down due to the virus. “Now that’s a sacrifice,” he said. “Wearing a mask is nothing compared to that. It is a selfless act we can all do to help get through this quicker.”
Cascarelli said, however, at the same time we have to be considerate of others. “There are people who have legitimate medical issues that prevent them from wearing a mask, and obviously you can’t tell this and make a judgment just by looking,” he said. “So we need to be respectful of each other at the same time as we do our own part.”
Most businesses in the county are complying with the governor’s mask mandate, Cascarelli said. “If we get repeated calls about one certain place, we will investigate and maybe have to issue a compliance letter, but most people are cooperative once they are educated,” he said.
Much of Cascarelli’s time this summer has been working with schools on their reopening plans. “I’ve worked with several schools to help them plan to safely reopen,” he said. “There have even been situations where maybe one family has specific concerns and we try to address each one of those.”
Cascarelli said how much people follow the guidelines as a community will determine the severity of the virus locally. “We know how to take care of each other here; we just need to do it for a while longer,” he said.
The Wayne County Health Department can be called at 330-264-9590. Questions also can be submitted through the department’s website at www.wayne-health.org/coronavirus.
Up-to-date local, state and national numbers are reported daily on the Wayne County Joint Information Center website at www.wcjic.org.
The official state of Ohio Health Department COVID-19 website is www.coronavirus.ohio.gov.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website is www.cdc.gov.