By Josh Margolis
HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – The Hill County Commission convened on Thursday for their weekly business meeting and approved a request from Health Director/Officer Kim Berg to allocate up to $100,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds in order to combat the ongoing pandemic.
The funds will be used to hire temporary contact tracers and case investigators that will be able to work off-site. These jobs will pay more than $18 an hour with a duration of up to a year.
Berg says that case investigations are currently taking up the vast majority of her Department’s time, and these temporary hires will help alleviate that burden.
“I think it will be a huge benefit. The next step is getting people to apply and fill those needs for us. But I think it’s a really good, positive thing for the Health Department. So hopefully, we’ll get people in to help our staff.”
The job postings will likely be provided to the Commissioners by Monday, with people able to send in applications later in the week.
Berg also announced that thanks to a Public Health Emergency Preparedness Grant (PHEP), they have hired Brandi Williams as a Disease Intervention Specialist and Lauren Bunton as a Congregate Living Coordinator. Williams started her job on September 1st, while Bunton’s first day is October 1st. These positions will be fully funded through the grant for two years, and Berg hopes that funding for the positions will be provided after that.
Quarantine Changes
After the meeting, Berg discussed how the last week has been for her Department since the change from requiring quarantines for close contacts to making it a strong recommendation.
“We need to start doing some more education on (the fact that despite) that it’s not an order right now, so you’re not going to be served by law enforcement if you choose to not do it, there are some ramifications if you choose not to (quarantine) that could come around. You leave yourself open for some personal liability if someone chooses to go (out) after that, if they get sick once they are around you. And that has come from the state health department, they’ve let us know that. That has happened with other diseases. I’m really hoping that it does not get to that point. There has been a shift. Our schools are really helping out sending us letters to contacts, which is nice, and taking some of that off of our workload at this point. But we’re also seeing that now, and it’s not necessarily that the quarantine went to a recommendation, it’s based off the legislation and the changes in the rules and how we can enforce or not enforce quarantine at this time, for COVID-19, is that asymptomatic contacts can still attend school. And we can’t keep them out at this point. I’m really hoping that that doesn’t increase our case numbers a ton, but the one leg that we have to stand on is identifying those cases and keeping those cases home so they are isolated and not spreading (the virus).”
Berg says most people that have been issued the quarantine guidelines are following the strong recommendations, but there are some that are disregarding it.
“We have had a few. So we’re kind of trying to realign the script that our contact tracers are using to really highlight that education piece…I do understand that there is the common cold out there and influenza, we haven’t had any confirmed cases, but other people have told me there are other viruses. And that is 100 percent true. And I think the most important key thing here is if you are sick, stay home. I don’t care if you have COVID-19 or if you have a stomach bug. If you’re sick, stay home. We’ve had a lot of people go to work when they are symptomatic and they are sick, and they expose people at work because they feel they need to be there.”
As for the flu season, Berg says she expects it to be worse than last year, which saw minimal cases in part due to COVID-19 mitigation measures that were widely observed.
“There’s not as much masking, there’s the large events that are going to be happening that are not being stopped, and I just think it will be worse than last year. We’re already seeing more illness in our community than we did last year. We have strep, we have a bad cold going around, we have pneumonia, and we have COVID at this point, that we know of.”
