by April Scheinoha
Reporter
As she has countless times since at least March, Inter-County Nursing Director Kayla Jore provided a COVID-19 update to the Pennington County Board at its meeting Tuesday, Aug. 11.
As of that morning, Pennington County had 74 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Two of those cases were active. The county hadn’t seen any additional positive cases within the last three days.
Of the latest cases, Jore said they were in their 50s to 80s. She attributed their ages to an increase in hospitalizations. Between Pennington and Red Lake counties, there were six COVID-19 hospitalizations within the last 14 days.
Thief River Care Center continues to comply with weekly COVID-19 testing of its entire facility after a resident contracted COVID-19 and died in July. Since that time, an additional resident and two staff members tested positive.
The state requires TRCC to have two consecutive weeks of negative tests before it can cease weekly tests and open its facility to visitors again. No one tested positive last week. This week’s test results weren’t available as of Tuesday morning, Jore said.
Inter-County Nursing conducts contact tracing for Pennington and Red Lake County cases. “We have not seen clusters in a specific workplace,” said Jore, who noted that she thinks workplaces and employees are being successful in quarantining and minimizing the spread of COVID-19.
Commissioner Cody Hempel asked whether others in a household are tested when someone has tested positive for COVID-19.
It is recommended for household members to be tested, Jore replied. It is also recommended that the whole household should quarantine for 14 days from the last exposure to a positive person. Individuals are considered to be contagious for 10 days.
Household members and close contacts should be tested five to seven days after their initial exposure to COVID-19. The incubation period is two to 10 days, so Jore cautioned that someone may have a negative test result if they obtain a COVID-19 test immediately after a known exposure. Even if an individual had a negative test after a known exposure, that individual should quarantine the full 14 days as symptoms may develop anytime during that time frame or the person may be asymptomatic.
Hempel noted that Pennington County’s cases may actually be higher than they appear.
Jore responded that she thinks Hempel is correct. Household contacts may opt not to be tested since it isn’t required, but she reminded them to quarantine the entire time.
If a household contact suffers symptoms after a known exposure, Jore said that person should be tested. However, she added that person probably already assumes a COVID-19 diagnosis.