Board of Health: July 9, 2020

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0:05 Below this is a headline or new special report. I’m John Caswell. The Marblehead Board of Health, Metuline 9th. Here’s the latest COVID-19 update. We currently have 237 or as of Monday, we had 237 confirmed positive cases. We currently have eight positive cases in town that we’re working and we’ve only had well we continue to have 30 deaths unfortunately. Just a couple reminders so I’ve changed the case reporting form to include some reminders. So all travelers arriving into Massachusetts, including Massachusetts residents returning home, are instructed to self-quarantine for 14 days except travelers from Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, and New Jersey. So unfortunately the governor is not doing a lot of publication on this but if you go onto the website these are the exact words on there. So we need to remind people that if you’re traveling from outside of New England that you need to self-quarantine for 14 days before you go back out into the public. If you had a close contact with a person who has been diagnosed with COVID-19, we want you to get tested and you need to self-quarantine, stay home, and monitor your health for symptoms of COVID for 14 days after your last contact, even if you have a negative test. So this is really important. So if you have a close contact with a positive case,

1:40 even if you go out and get tested and it’s negative, you still need to abide by the quarantine. And the reason why is that the regular incubation period is about six days but it can be as long as 14. So we want to remind people that you need to quarantine yourself and check your symptoms daily. We recommend you take your temperature twice daily and there’s a whole list of symptoms that you need to be worried about these days. There’s even you know potential of a rash that could be your symptom that you need to be aware of. And then if you do have a positive case, we recommend that you know whatever we please call the Marvel Health Department to report the contact with the positive case. So we are aware of all these cases out there. Of the eight cases, are they they’re mostly community not nursing home? Yeah, these are community now. So we are definitely seeing a shift in the age group when we were in the beginning of COVID and through for many months, the majority of the ages was 60 and up and now we’re seeing a switch of the majority of the ages right now are 20s and 30s. Obviously, Massachusetts is trending really well these days. Our case count is down. We’re doing a lot of testing. So we are doing all the right things but we still need to be vigilant about what we’re doing. Wash your hands, cover your mouth and your cough,

3:12 wear your mask if you’re less than six feet to somebody and just try to remember all the things that we need to do. But as part of phase three, we have movie theaters and outdoor performance venues are now open. All always following guidelines. We have museums, cultural and historical sites are now open following guidelines. We have fitness centers and health clubs, certain indoor recreation activities and low potential for contact. And we have professional sports teams under the authority of league wide rules may hold games without spectators. And we also have other guidelines on a lot of sports and outdoor activities. With that, you have to go online and take a look at all the guidelines. Some of them, it takes me about three times to read through them to fully understand them. We’re always available to discuss them with you. If you have questions, we’ve had a lot of calls from the yacht clubs just going over some of the outdoor competitions versus tournament. And in the sports, they have risk categories. So low risk, medium risk and high risk. And that’s all based on potential contact. So very low. Are you going to say low risk? I’m sorry. Yeah, so low risk sport activities, batting cages, tennis, pickleball, swimming, disc golf, golf, individual biking, surfing, horseback riding. It’s a lot of these individual sports, individual sailing,

4:47 a moderate risk sport activity, baseball, softball, two to three people in a sailboat, track, field, cross country, running clubs, swimming teams, volleyball, dance class, fencing, field hockey, and no contact lacrosse. A high risk sport, examples are football, wrestling, soccer, rugby, basketball, lacrosse, ice hockey, competitive cheer, martial arts, crew sailing, more than three people in a boat, and ultimate frisbee. So obviously we still have a contract with Mosquito Control. So it’s the Northeast Mosquito Control. We do have a trap in town where we take samples on a daily or weekly basis. We’re looking for various types of mosquitoes that carry EEE and West Nile virus and then you test those mosquitoes to see what’s in them, to see if they do contain the virus. And if you do start to have hits, the state will encourage you, us, to do messaging and make sure that the public is aware of this. Usually these issues tend to be towards the end of the summer when kids are going back to school around football, and at times the state will give us guidelines to stay in like you know before dusk and stuff like that. We are not at those periods in Marblehead at this time. Beach testing is going very well. We have not had any kind of failure. We haven’t had anything close to a failure yet. So beach is being sampled every Wednesday and we have the results generally back by Thursday

6:21 afternoon. But it has been a great beach season. We’ve had little rain that usually affects the quality of our water. So at this point we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hopefully continues on with this. MHTV will continue to bring you COVID-19 updates on our website, marbleheadtv.org, on our Facebook page, Marblehead Community Access and Media, and on our MHTV Community Bulletin Board. And if you’d like these updates delivered right to your inbox, go to our website, marbleheadtv.org, and sign up for our constant contact emails. For Headliner News, I’m John Caswell. Thanks for watching.