HYANNIS –Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment Director Sean O’Brien believes that the non-essential work ban issued by Governor Charlie Baker could be extended past May 4.
“Those dates are a lot of times decision points, and I think it’s really going to be a decision point and we may see something change by a week or two or three, it just wouldn’t surprise me,” O’Brien said.
“What everybody has to remember on this, I know as a country as a state and as a county we have all gone to extreme measure in order to protect ourselves, but it’s really important that over the next few weeks we don’t try to say everything is all good early because all that does is potentially set us back and we could see another wave.”
O’Brien added that everyone has to be cautious over the next few weeks and that officials from the state and county have to use the best science available to them to determine when and how businesses re-open.
He said that everything may not open at once and that it is more likely that businesses re-open in a staggered fashioned.
On Thursday night, President Donald Trump issued federal guidelines on how states could begin reopening for business.
“It’s also important to recognize that things may be a little different for a long time,” O’Brien said.
“I’ll use pre-February, that’s something we may not see for a long time and I think we’re going to see a lot of caution when looking at this and making sure we are following everything we need to do in order to make sure we do not have this resurface.”
County health officials are being cautiously optimistic about the peak of the virus on Cape Cod but are not ready to say it has hit yet.
O’Brien said that the numbers and information on confirmed cases and hospitalizations change every day and at this time it is still too early to tell if the virus has hit a peak on Cape Cod.
“We are all being very cautiously optimistic but we can’t 100 percent say that’s the case, it’s just some of the numbers at this point may be showing that,” said O’Brien.
“Any day things can change, that data is presented to us every day and what we also have to realize is that we are at the point where anything could change on any day.”
He added that it is important that people continue to be safe and practice social distancing, especially during this time.
The drive-thru testing facility at Cape Cod Community College saw 53 cars come through on Wednesday.
That brings the total number of cars to come through the facility up to 1,872 since its opening.
The number of cars to come through the facility does not exactly represent the number of people who have been tested.
County health officials said that next week is a critical week for testing and they are anticipating the number of cars at the drive-thru facility to increase.
They are also updating the heatmap system daily.
O’Brien reminded residents that the first responders here on Cape Cod are doing everything they can to combat the virus during the pandemic.
He said that it goes to show how lucky Cape Cod is to have such hardworking community members and that the people on the front lines are the real heroes.
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