Patient being tested at the Cape Cod Healthcare drive-thru facility at Cape Cod Community College
HYANNIS – Barnstable County health officials believe that when businesses return after the pandemic, they will have to continue to practice safe social distancing and proper hygienics.
“I think if there are businesses coming back into play, they just need to make sure they practice social distancing and everything as best they can,” said Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment Director Sean O’Brien.
“It’s important when these businesses come back online that we make sure that they follow proper social distancing and limit the number of folks of who come into work and using proper protection in the work place as well.”
O’Brien added that while the Barnstable County Department of Health is considered an essential service by the state, it does not mean that every single person who works there is coming into the office every day.
“We stagger, we do have people working from home and we are doing a lot of work from home, and we have people come in a few days a week and work from home a few days. It’s staggered and that’s kind of how we are doing it,” said O’Brien.
“I think that’s something that also has to be put in play. You’re coming back online or you’re an essential business, you want to preserve your workforce, so you want to make sure people are practicing social distancing, wearing a mask to protect themselves, whatever they need to do because that’s going to be a part of it for that essential business to continue.”
Monday saw only ten cars come through the drive-thru testing facility at Cape Cod Community College.
The facility closed at noon because of the hazardous weather in the area.
The weather caused no damage to the test site.
The number of cars that come through the facility does not exactly represent the number of people who have been tested.
The facility’s hours are now Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The number of cars are expected to increase at the facility in the coming week.
O’Brien said that he is still expecting the peak day for confirmed cases of the virus to be Monday, April 20.
He added that this week is a comparison week and will be a good week to see where Cape Cod stands in comparison to other parts of the country.
County health officials will continue to monitor the numbers coming in to determine when the peak has hit.
There has not yet been any patients for the post-acute medical facilities at the nursing homes in Brewster and Falmouth or at Joint Base Cape Cod.
According to O’Brien, both hospitals on Cape Cod are only at 50 percent capacity.
He also said that while times are tough, the people of Barnstable County are keeping their spirits up.
“I think the people of Cape Cod are doing pretty good,” said O’Brien.
“I think the fact that people are staying home and social distancing is helping quite a bit. We are still heading into this heavy time but if you can just keep enduring by staying at home, I think we are going to be seeing things not as bad hopefully, but we just cannot be 100 percent sure.”
He added that people wearing masks and practicing safe social distancing is greatly helping the Barnstable County Health Department weather the storm.
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