CANTON — St. Lawrence County issued a state of emergency Monday following a large spike in COVID-19 cases over the last few days, and the numbers are expected to rise.
The state of emergency issued by county Board of Legislators Chairman Joseph R. Lightfoot, R-Ogdensburg, goes into effect early Tuesday, but does not pose any immediate restrictions or stipulations on county residents.
“There are options related to restrictions of travel and things like that. None are in place at this time; they would come out as emergency orders under the state of emergency, but we are very concerned and I think getting the attention of county residents, heightening their awareness of what’s happening with the cases is really important,” County Administrator Ruth A. Doyle said Monday.
While not a direct effect of the order, Ms. Doyle told the Board of Legislators on Monday that she seeks to move half of the county’s workforce back to fully remote operations as was done earlier in the year. She hopes to complete this by the end of the week.
The order comes in the week after the steepest rise in confirmed COVID-19 cases since April, with 40 new cases discovered in the county since Saturday, putting the total at 74 known active cases.
“I really feel like we need to take this opportunity to reset and to regain the ground that we’ve lost in the last few weeks,” Dr. Andrew Williams, president of the county Board of Health, told the Board of Legislators on Monday evening.
Both Dr. Williams and county Public Health Director Dana O. McGuire acknowledged a continued steep rise in cases will prove difficult for the county to manage.
“With this increase, we’re not able to do the work like we were doing,” Ms. McGuire said of her department’s ability to manage contact tracing, exposure notices and the other functions its maintained over the last few months. “This is the first time that we go home at night and there’s something that we need to catch up on the next day. We can’t do it all in one day.”
When asked, Dr. Williams said there are about 40 dedicated hospital beds in the county for COVID-19 patients. There are currently 11 hospitalizations.
Multiple legislators raised concerns to the health officials about concerns they’ve heard from constituents who had not received results of COVID-19 tests or follow ups from contact tracers. Both Dr. Williams and Ms. McGuire said there have been some issues with results coming from St. Lawrence Health System following a roughly two weeks ago cyberattack, which downed many computer systems at the hospitals.
“The malware that infected the St. Lawrence Health System really added a kind of chaos that was not expected,” Dr. Williams, who is an employee of SLHS, told the board. “I think systems that were up and running reasonably smoothly were derailed.”
Ms. McGuire echoed that statement noting the test results from the hospitals have been delayed and weren’t arriving in the same fashion.
She also noted her department is tracking some potential exposures at polling locations during Election Day, though the department hasn’t released any formal notices about particular sites and times.
“There’s nothing inevitable about things getting worse; I think if we do nothing clearly things will get worse and probably a lot worse. But I think if people take this seriously and re-engage, there’s room for optimism. It’s not going to go away, but it may be manageable,” Dr. Williams said.
The state of emergency will remain in effect until Dec. 8, but Ms. Doyle said the county will review renewing that depending on the situation at that time.
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St. Lawrence County declares state of emergency following continued COVID spike - NNY360
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