(Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette
As Indiana tries to target its response to upsurges in COVID-19 cases, the wait time for test results has gotten longer and, as The Journal Gazette’s Niki Kelly reported, the number of tests being conducted has dropped. The latter situation may get worse because the federal government has redirected some of the testing resources sent to Indiana to “hotter” spots, such as Florida, where governors have made less prudent decisions about reopening.
This, as Indiana COVID-19 cases are again beginning to spike. As Gov. Eric Holcomb said as he extended some of the state’s shelter-in-place requirements another two weeks: “We’re living on the edge here, day-in and day-out.”
What all this means to Allen County, which has so far fared better than many other places despite 139 confirmed deaths, is not yet clear to the county’s new health commissioner, Dr. Matthew Sutter.
“We don’t have a great way to measure that until we get the test results back,” he said. It’s an overcapacity problem at the labs, which he thinks will be rectified.
Sutter doesn’t think death rates are the most accurate way to gauge the problem because many patients who die have been hospitalized for weeks.
“We saw an increase in cases in June,” he said. “We peaked in mid-June.” But the numbers have been stable for the past few weeks.
“I think we will follow the national trends, just more slowly,” Sutter said.
One key to keeping Allen County relatively stable has been the great work the health department has done on contact-tracing isolation, which limits the number of transmissions from a person who tests positive. But when the turnaround is too long, tracing becomes less beneficial.
Sutter is hoping for more testing relief if the state is able to develop regional testing labs.
Which brings us back, as always, to the basics: Hand washing, social distancing and, most of all, wearing masks in public. “I think those are the big things,” Sutter said. “I’m not sure that they’re sexy anymore; they’re just incredibly effective.”
“I would like everyone to wear a mask outside their house,” he said, then paused. “But I think it’s a difficult thing to enforce.”
Of course, in some settings, everyone must now wear a mask, and the new commissioner is hoping it will catch on. “I really love what the retail stores are doing with requiring masking,” he said. “Once you get used to wearing a mask, then it’s strange not to wear a mask. It’s just the way our brain works.”
Today it’s hard to imagine Indiana’s streets filled with mask-wearing, social-distancing Hoosiers. But before March, it would have been hard to imagine empty malls and shuttered schools.
We want to get kids back to school safely. We want to be able to relax in crowds. This is what it will take. How about it, Hoosiers, are you up for it?
