BOISE – All employees and visitors are required to wear a face-covering while visiting or working at Ada County facilities when physical distancing is not possible. Wearing a face covering is an easy way to protect those around you from COVID-19. This measure, along with frequent hand-washing, and maintaining a physical distance of at least 6-feet from others while in public, allows us to work together to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities. Currently, we are in STAGE 3 as ordered by Central District Health. The Ada County Board of Commissioners re-emphasizes the need to follow the protocols established by public health officials so we can progress to STAGE 4 instead of returning to STAGE 2.
We have received some questions from the public on the need for these public safety measures. Below are two of the questions and the response from public health experts at Central District Health. Additional FAQs on the public health order can be found at Central District Health.
Q: Why can’t we just get COVID, develop herd immunity, and move on?
A: Not everyone has a mild illness – we have an obligation to protect our most vulnerable residents and see that if they do get sick they receive the care they need. We must also take measures to ensure that our health care system is in a position to provide necessary care to anyone who needs it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that although the presence of antibodies when detected can indicate at least some degree of immunity until it’s better determined how long and to what degree immunity happens with COVID, it can’t be assumed that individuals with truly positive antibody test results are protected from future infection.
Q: Why are you doing this since hospitals are not inundated with patients? Why are you moving the goal posts?
A: It is very fortunate that despite the increased cases we are seeing, that illness severity has been mild to moderate so far.
• In part, because of that mild illness, what we are seeing through case investigations is that these individuals have had many contacts while they have been infectious – they’re out in the community not realizing they’re infectious and they’re visiting elderly relatives, socializing with friends and co-workers. They are unknowingly exposing a host of people in their lives to the virus.
• The increase in cases locally could prove particularly challenging for individuals at much higher risk for severe illness. This often means a greater number of hospitalizations and potentially more unfavorable outcomes.
• Ultimately we are not trying to prevent all infections from happening – but we are trying to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed, which could happen very quickly. The move back to Stage 3 was done in consultation with our hospital systems to moderate the case counts and prevent that from happening.
Thank you to everyone who is doing their part to reduce community spread, allowing us all to return to normal operations as soon as possible.