After remaining steady at 11 since late summer, the St. Joseph County death count due to the COVID-19 virus now stands at 15. One death occurred the week before last according to comments last week by Rebecca Burns, Health Officer with the Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency (BHSJ). Three more deaths were added to BHSJ’s online statistics early this week.
The newly reported deaths follow a sharp spike in reported cases in the county over roughly the past week and a half. Watershed Voice reached out to Burns for additional comment in preparing this story but had not yet heard back from her as of press time. However, her comments last week came as the daily, new case numbers began to climb.
Burns said a number of the new cases reported last week came from a single employer in the county, but the countywide total case number has climbed further since then. BHSJ’s statistics are drawn from its own resources as well as tracking that occurs at the state level. According to those state statistics, the current total number of cases for the county stands at 1,083, including 931 confirmed cases and 152 probable cases. BHSJ’s total stands at 938.
The biggest one-day spike in cases was reported at the state level on October 12. State graphs show 25 confirmed and four probable new cases in St. Joseph County that day, and since October 10, a total of 91 confirmed, new cases have developed, along with 14 probable cases. Just under 23,000 tests for the virus have been conducted in the same time period.
Working with BHSJ’s total, about one in every 65 of the county’s roughly 61,000 residents has now tested positive for the virus since it first arrived last spring. At the time of a previous Watershed Voice update on October 15, the rate was one out of every 74 people. On August 12, one out of 127 people had tested positive.
One challenge with the virus is that it can spread undetected for some time before symptoms appear. Once an infection occurs, the COVID-19 virus can take anywhere from one to 14 days to present the types of symptoms that might inspire a person to get tested, and nasopharyngeal tests requiring laboratory results can take one to several days to return results. Symptoms can also vary significantly from one person to the next, and some people never show symptoms at all. Thus, persons bearing unreported and untested cases may unknowingly spread the virus.
Sixteen days ago, on Friday, October 2, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a ruling that nullified a long series of measures Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued in the form of Executive Orders since early in the pandemic. The court ruled Whitmer did not have the authority to issue such orders for an extended period of time without legislative approval. The orders established rules relating to masking, social distancing, and other measures.
However, shortly after the ruling, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies began issuing new rules under their own authority that replaced the Executive Orders. That included rules requiring masks indoors at places like businesses and public meetings.
Masks’ primary purpose in limiting the spread of the disease is to capture the microscopic moisture droplets that carry the virus on a person’s breath as they force air from their nose and mouth, sort of like a catcher’s mitt. Because of this, Burns said last week, “me wearing a mask protects others around me. And others wearing a mask help to protect me. If I wear a mask, but others around me do not, I am not protected from them. So, it’s important that everybody wear a mask with this particular virus.”
In her comments last week, Burns said, “We still need to wear masks, we still need to be socially distance, and we still need to limit our gathering sizes,” Burns said. The new HHS orders “are certainly a little bit different than the executive orders were. But, largely, most of the requirements are still in place,” she said. “We’re really asking people to put politics aside, and let’s just, you know, let’s remember, we are in a pandemic, and we do need to continue the mitigation strategies that we know work to prevent this disease.”
Dave Vago is a writer and columnist for Watershed Voice. A Philadelphia native with roots in Three Rivers, Vago is a planning consultant to history and community development organizations and is the former Executive Director of the Three Rivers DDA/Main Street program.
