Health Officials Advise People to Stay Home During Holiday Weekend

Patient being tested at the Cape Cod Healthcare drive-thru facility at Cape Cod Community College

HYANNIS – Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment Director Sean O’Brien is stressing the importance of social distancing and staying at home during the Easter weekend.

“I know these are times for families with this being a holiday Sunday and a holiday week I know we’ve got both Easter and Passover and as much as we want to be with families at these times it’s important to continue our social distancing and to stay at home and be at home in order to prevent the spread of this virus,” O’Brien said.     

“I’ll be calling my family on Easter Sunday, we don’t plan on traveling, we are staying on Cape Cod, we are staying at home, and we are isolating and do not have family coming over as well. It’s important for people to just maintain this we need to make sure this continues on until we get that safer data coming out.”

O’Brien said people should consider contacting family using social media or other resources for the holiday, but staying at home is most important at this time.

Thursday saw 55 cars go through the drive-thru testing facility Cape Cod Community College, however it had to close early due to thunderstorms in the area.

More than 16-hundred cars have come through the site since its opening.

The number of cars to come through the site do not exactly represent the number of people who have been tested.

The turnaround time on the testing is about two days.

Cape Cod Healthcare announced they are preparing three post-surge facilities at Joint Base Cape Cod and nursing homes in Brewster and Falmouth as the number of coronavirus cases is expected to increase in the coming days.

County health officials said that the sites will be step-down facilities and that they will not be housing critical patients.

Patients in critical conditions still need to be in the hospital.

O’Brien said that the locations will help the effort to combat the virus and that if Cape Cod does see a surge there will be enough beds.

County health officials said that they collaborated with Cape Cod Healthcare, fire, and police departments on all three sites for planning and set-up.

O’Brien said the number of cases over the next two to three days will be a good indicator of where Cape Cod is in regards to peak and plateau of the virus.

He said that health officials have a good handle on the number of cases and that right now Barnstable County is not at a surge level.

County health officials are also working on getting the number of recoveries on Cape Cod, but currently that data is not available.

O’Brien said it could take some time to get those figures.

He added that predicting when the peak and plateau of the virus will hit is not an easy task as the numbers can change drastically day to day.