News

More people are showing up to get covid test

By Lightning Reports, Published: July 15, 2020

Henderson County is approaching 1,000 cases of covid-19 amid a ramp-up of testing, Emergency Services Director Jimmy Brissie told the Board of Commissioners on Wednesday.

Of 12,000 covid-19 tests, 951 have come back positive and 421 of those infected people have recovered. Of the county's 51 deaths, all but three have been residents of long-term care facilities. Of the total cases, 294 are associated with congregant care facilities.

"I would just like to point out that 951, while a fairly high number, is still less than 1 percent of our population," Commissioner Rebecca McCall said.

Treatment of covid-19 patients in nursing homes and other residential facilities has improved, Brissie said.

"We're in a much better place now than we were then" when the crisis started, he said.

Turnout for the free public testing site at East Henderson High School has increased significantly. On Tuesday, close to 550 people showed up to get tested, the biggest day the county has had. "The last three weeks, they have continued to increase."

The number of positive cases remains steady at around 14 percent.

"Granted, most folks coming to get a test, they have  areason to get that test," Brissie said. "They may be mildly symptomatic, they may think they have been exposed." The number of new cases are "staying pretty steady, somewhere in that 20 cases per day range. It's safe to say over the past mo we have seen that increase in community spread. Most of our new cases have been outside long-term care facilities." The turnaround time for test results has been roughly 5-7 days, he said.

Chairman Grady Hawkins asked for more information on the county's death rate, which he thought had "either leveled off or declined" as testing increased and more cases outside long-term care facilities turned up.

"I would also really like to see hospitalizations," Commissioner Bill Lapsley said. "I follow that very closely because as you'll recall one of the key issues when we did this back in February was the hospital rooms being overwhelmed. Fortunately, we have not seen that. I think it would be helpful to see how the hospitalizations have tracked."

Brissie described the labor-intensive contact tracing to notify people who have been in close contact with a virus-infected person and encourage them to quarantine.

"We're building the fire line as big as we can to prevent it from spreading," he said.