Board of Commissioners submits request to enter in to phase II reopening
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The Klamath County Board of Commissioners submitted a letter to Governor Brown today to request permission to enter in to phase II reopening on June 5, 2020 or earlier if possible.
May 29, 2020
Governor Kate Brown
900 Court St. NE Salem, OR 97301RE: Moving to Phase II Reopening
Dear Honorable Governor Brown, We respectfully request a transition for Klamath County into Phase II as of June 5th, 2020. We are confident the County has sufficient PPE for a 30-45 day period for County first responders, as reported by our County Emergency Manager, Brandon Fowler.
As of May 28, 2020, Klamath County has had 41 COVID positive cases. Of those, 36 have recovered. Klamath County Public Health (KCHP) has partnered with several local agencies to provide testing in more remote communities in an effort to increase access. KCPH continues to perform timely, thorough contact investigations and provide quarantine/isolation instructions to those who require it to mitigate community transmission as much as possible. In the event Klamath County experiences, a significant increase in cases, KCPH has established a surge team of 10 KCPH staff who are trained and ready to assist in contact tracing and investigations.
If an outbreak occurs within a congregate facility or place of employment, KCPH will work with management staff to determine the need for decontamination, targeted testing, and other mitigating actions. KCPH maintains strong relationships with its community partners who are able to assist with wrap around support services. Throughout this response the public information officer for KCPH has provided community-wide communication through a variety of media outlets as well as our website (https://publichealth.klamathcounty.org/1041/2019-Coronavirus) and Health Alert Network. Using these well-established methods of communication, information can be quickly disseminated.
Additionally, the extended incident management team, which includes community partners from Emergency Management, EMS, Healthcare, Klamath Tribes, and Community support organizations, is on standby to quickly scale up if needed. In an extreme situation, we are in communication with Kingsley Air Base/National Guard and consider them a close partner and resource.
Related to the additional criteria required to enter phase II, we recognize that the addition of three new cases this week skews our trend number for the last 7 days, however, based on our robust tracing program, our extensive testing ability, and our extensive medical capacity, we can mitigate any concerns related to not meeting that criteria. As has been noted by Dr. Sidelinger, when overall numbers are small, particularly in a rural community like ours, any type of increase percentage wise isn’t necessarily reflective of a major problem. Klamath County Public Health and our medical community have plenty of capacity to handle a few cases, and we anticipated a few new cases based on our increase in testing.
We look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure our community is safe and begins to recover economically. We stand ready to serve our citizens and the State.
Again, we respectfully request moving into phase II on June 5th or earlier, our community is ready.
Sincerely,
Donnie Boyd, Commissioner
Kelley Minty Morris, Chair
Derrick DeGroot, Vice Chair