Barnstable County Public Health Department Director Sean O’Brien and Barnstable County Public Health Nurse Deirdre Arvidson discuss coronavirus and emergency preparedness Wednesday before the Board of Regional Commissioners.
BARNSTABLE – The Barnstable County Commissioners unanimously approved the establishment of an Emergency Management Fund Wednesday that would be available to combat coronavirus.
The Commissioners approved a request for $250,000 from the General Fund Unreserved Fund for the Emergency Management Fund.
The fund will be managed by Barnstable County Public Health Director and Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Sean O’Brien.
O’Brien said the money will assist with supplies or equipment that need to be purchased in the case of an emergency.
“We have things we need to purchase for nursing, for physicians or whatever our response may be, and ways of supporting the community out there as well,” he said.
“A lot of it will be, potentially, supplies and contracts. If we need to go beyond volunteers, bring our public health nurses in for extra contract money, but I think a good portion of it will be supplies and equipment.”
O’Brien said the county is working with the health departments in all 15 Cape Cod communities, which have comprehensive emergency response plans.
“The towns have been preparing for a type of an emergency like this for a very long time,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said town public health departments are going to be out in front and that the county department will provide support and assist with things towns are unable to handle on their own.
“Right now we are working directly with the 15 towns to make sure those plans are as up to date as possible, and getting them to communicate among each other,” he said.
Health departments across the Cape have a strong track record of working together, and O’Brien said the county health department has had strong relationships with all town departments.
The county held a conference call with all town health departments on Tuesday.
Plans are to open up those discussions with emergency managers including police and fire chiefs to talk about preparations being taken to bolster response.
“It’s not if, it is when,” O’Brien said.
The county will continue to provide updates and the latest information on the virus on its website, barnstablecountyhealth.org.
“Our goal is to make sure that when this does go through the area it’s not as bad of a hit as we may see in other areas of the country,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said the department is trained for a situation like this and went through something similar in 2010 with H1N1 flu strain.
More than 94,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide with more than 3,200 deaths.
In the United States there have been 130 confirmed cases with 9 deaths.
Barnstable County Public Health Nurse Deirdre Arvidson said the county website and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website have a lot of good information for residents, including what to do in homes, communities, tips for first responders, schools and more.
“There is no vaccine coming and there is no treatment,” Arvidson said. “It’s palliative care.”
The majority of people who contract the virus will have cold or mild flu-like symptoms.
The people most impacted by the virus are individuals 80 or older, which is a large demographic on Cape Cod.
“I just think people need to follow the directions of common hygiene,” Arvidson said. “Start with personal protective measures – good hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette and environmental surface cleaning.”
O’Brien said the county is looking at elderly housing, long-term care facilities and councils on aging to make sure they are prepared.
“Any type of public health emergency means all hands on deck,” O’Brien said.
Diana Gaumond, the director of the county Medical Reserve Corps, said they are looking for more volunteers.
“There will be things like contact tracing that will overwhelm the local health departments and this is where our volunteers can step in,” Gaumond said.
The Corps has about 250 steady volunteers and Gaumond said there are usually about 150 or so available at any given time.
Guamond said volunteers can also be used in education efforts.
“We’ve had requests from different groups that would like to have someone come out and talk to them,” she said. “And we feel this is a really vital role because panic comes into it if people don’t understand what is happening.”
A volunteer reception center will be open on Saturday, March 14 at the Open Cape building at the County Complex in Barnstable Village from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“We’ll have people there just talking to anyone who would like to volunteer getting them registered on the spot,” Gaumond said.
There have not been any confirmed cases on Cape Cod and O’Brien said the county health department will continue to communicate with communities on preparations.
There have been about 600 people under investigation in the state in self-quarantine. About 400 have been cleared.
There have been two confirmed cases of coronavirus in Massachusetts.
The latest case is a woman is in her 20s who lives in Norfolk County. State officials said she recently traveled to Italy with a school group and was symptomatic. She is recovering at home.
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