ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Ohio Department of Health issued a memorandum late last week signifying a change in COVID-19 management tactics – and that decision prompted the Belmont County Health Department to do the same.

In light of the enormous surge in reported outbreaks, local health departments will now concentrate more on cluster outbreaks and not infected individuals.

“The recent surge in COVID-19 cases and the new recommendation of the Ohio Department of Health is forcing the Belmont County Health Department to change the way it advises people who have contracted the virus,” local health officials said in a statement. ‘The health department staff are no longer able to keep individually contacting every Belmont County resident who tests positive for the disease. ODH is advising local health departments to shift to a cluster or outbreak-based model that prioritizes people in high risk settings such as congregate residential settings.”

These include shelters, correctional facilities and nursing homes, among other settings.

Belmont County Deputy Health Administrator Robert Sproul said new cases last week were reported at a rate of 100-150 per day and the staff cannot keep up with that kind of volume when required to call every individual who tests positive for COVID.

“Basically we were handling just anybody who was positive. Now will be more towards groups, so, when a nursing home has an outbreak and that’s where they’re moving us more toward the high risk people, such as a nursing home or day care center, we would be involved with that,” Sproul said, he said of those types of outbreaks.

“Now the schools are still responsible for the mask-to-stay, test-to-play guidance,” he said, noting that what the hea;th department had been doing by following up on each individual is not practical anymore.

“And there’s no way we could keep up,” Sprould said. “We just could not keep up with that pace and get the information out to people in a timely manner. So the state had moved on to basically saying we’re going immediately into this ‘cluster-based’ outbreak based model.”

ODH is asking people to isolate themselves and notify their close contacts, anyone in their households and their co-workers if they test positive. People exposed to someone positive are asked to follow guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ODH.

Monroe County Health Administrator Linda Masters said her staff already has taken action, since last Thursday, by implementing an automated email that returns vital information to anyone who emails the health department of their positive status.

“So, we went from actually making the phone call to having an automated email reply, which has helped us tremendously with our staffing time on contacting everyone,” Masters explained. “So that was the transition that we made at that time.”

According to the BCHD memo, schools will still report student positives to them “by close of day on Fridays beginning February 4, 2022.” Sproul said the state has contracted with Public Consulting Group and will continue operating under current standards.

“PCG is also dealing with the surge and is presently seeing a delay of up to six days in contacting county positives,” according to the BCHD memo. “With the sheer

volume of current and expected cases, we need the public’s help to make these notifications for isolation and quarantine in a quick manner to mitigate risk of transmission.”

The memo also said they will continue to contact the age groups of 65 and older and under 18 years of age but admits they might not be able to contact everyone in those groups.

For Belmont County residents only, email your test results, full name, birth date, phone number and test date to covidresults@belmontcountyhealth.com. BCHD is also asking people who need a return to work/school/daycare letter to use their test result.

Sproul said schools still need to follow the mask-to-stay/test-to-play option

policy.

For more information, visit belmontcountyhealth.com.