FROM THE SHAWANO-MENOMINEE COUNTIES HEALTH DEPARTMENT

We continue to experience a significant number of COVID-19 cases across Wisconsin and across Shawano and Menominee Counties. Unfortunately, due to the increased numbers of cases, health departments throughout Wisconsin are struggling with keeping up with the extent of contact tracing needs. Until cases decrease again, we still continue to do the best as we can with contact tracing, but we ask for your additional help during this time. Here are some ways you can help us out:
– Always monitor yourself for symptoms.
– If you are sick, stay home.
o Reminder: Isolation is for at least 10 days (with at least 24 hours of improved symptoms without the use of medication) before returning to usual activities.
– If you have been a close contact to someone who is sick (diagnosed or tested
positive for COVID-19), stay home.
o Reminder: Quarantine is for 14 days from your last date of contact to the person who was sick (diagnosed or tested positive). Keep in mind for household members, this may be longer.
o Reminder: A close contact to someone with COVID-19 is someone who meets one of the following criteria:
– Direct physical contact with the person (for example, a hug, kiss, or handshake)
– Within 6 feet of the person for a total of more than 15 minutes in a single day
– Contact with the person’s respiratory secretions (for example, coughed or sneezed on; contact with a dirty tissue; shared a drinking glass, food, towels, or other personal items)
– Live with the person or stayed overnight for at least one night in a house with the person.
– Always stay home while you are waiting for test results.
– If you are sick (and diagnosed or test positive), please think about any close contacts you may have had up to 2 days before your symptoms started.
o We would ask you to notify your close contacts that they may have been exposed to COVID-19.

Thank you to everyone who has been doing their part by participating in isolation and quarantine. This helps to keep the cases of illness from spreading even further.

OTHER UPDATES:
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are significantly increasing in Wisconsin and also in our Shawano and Menominee community. Hospitals are more often at full capacity.

Some might have noticed that we have made some changes to our data updates. Due to the increases in cases, we have found it challenging to assure some pieces of data are accurate. For example, the number of people hospitalized is difficult for us to locally monitor at this time. We have chosen to remove some of these data components that may be inaccurate and encourage you to view our Hub Site and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services website for related data that is available.

It is also important to note that soon there will be a short outage to the computer system we use to manage contact tracing. This can mean that it may take us a little longer to contact some people if results are reported during the time of the outage. This may also mean that there may be some delays with updating data. Thank you in advance for your patience. And, as always, stay well and stay safe.