COVID-19 tracing practices also addressed
By Kellen Olshefski
Correspondent
Walworth County’s Health and Human Services Committee members voted in favor of a resolution last week that seeks to authorize the creation of a public health nurse position at Health and Human Services.
At the Oct. 21 committee meeting, Walworth County Health and Human Services Director Liz Aldred said the department is looking to create an additional public health nurse position as part of its budget considerations for 2021, and was looking to begin the hiring process immediately.
“If we could start recruiting now to be able to bring on an additional nurse, pending approval in the budget of that position… that would allow us to bring that individual on some time thereafter,” she said.
According to Aldred, the department had to recruit for and hire some part-time staff this year including bringing on an additional public health specialist who also happened to be a nurse.
“So, I am hopeful to find a nurse,” she said.
Aldred said she’s heard from human resources connections that individuals in other healthcare fields are seeking something a bit more stable.
“We might actually be someplace that’s attractive,” she said.
Walworth County Health and Human Services Deputy Director Carlo Nevicosi also noted the department’s most recent nursing hire came from a different health department.
“So, I think she viewed Walworth County as a good move,” he said.
Aldred said the department would be taking the budget item to the Human Resources Committee next.
A motion to approve was passed unanimously by the committee.
Contact tracing practices
In other business, Aldred also addressed Walworth County COVID-19 contact tracing practices that have come up recently, though she noted the practice itself is not new.
Aldred said two local testing providers are beginning to use only antigen testing, noting that if the test shows responsive to having COVID-19, the tested subject is labeled as probable for having the virus, as only a PCR test can provide a positive diagnosis.
However, she explained, the state requirement for contact tracing is that antigen and PCR test results are treated the same.
Aldred said what was supposed to happen was if a person had an antigen test, they would then go and get a PCR test, which would be entered into the system.
“So, when you have an antigen test, it doesn’t show up as a positive in our community because it’s not a positive,” she explained. “It doesn’t qualify as a positive because it’s not that higher level of sensitivity.”
According to Aldred, the people that are testing and turning out probable are not necessarily following up with the PCR test.
“We treat them the same, because that’s what we’re expected to. So, we do the contact tracing and we do the disease monitoring for those individuals who show up as responsive to that,” she said.
“It’s really not different. We just shifted from more PCR testing to antigen testing. So it looks different and when we’re discussing it with individuals it sounds different. When they’re getting their contact tracing, there’s different questions and different responses,” she added.
Aldred also said the system used to track cases recently had to go down for three days for updates. When it came back up, Walworth County had an influx of 130 PCR positive tests.
She said they have had to step up to the crisis standards because of this, reducing the number of people the county will do individual contact tracing with.
As a result, she said, the county will only be doing contact tracing with the positive or probable individual, as well as immediate family members and individuals. From there, the positive or probable individual will be responsible for reaching out to other individuals that they’ve been in contact with, Aldred explained.
“We’re only going to do that for the period of time it takes us to get caught back up,” she said, noting HHS is bringing on a second contracted provider to do contact tracing for the county.
“We are one of at least four counties in our region that have had to step back to that, because, again, the system went down across the whole state, so we’ve seen a lot of other counties that have had to step back to that as well,” she said.
In response to a question posed by a committee member, Aldred said contract tracing staff have received a lot of pushback from individuals they have to contact, which she said she understands, as COVID is “scary.” But, she said, staff is doing their best to respond compassionately to individuals in the community they need to contact.
