Shannon County Health Center is announcing a second positive case of COVID-19 in the county. The new case is an individual under the age of 20 and a contact to the first case reported.
The patient’s identity will remain confidential, and no further personal information will be released. At this time, their symptoms do not require hospital care, and they are following all public health guidance for designated time of home isolation.
Neither one of these were travel-related cases. What that means is that they did not travel from an area with widespread community transmission. It does not mean that they have not been out of their house.
“We thank everyone for the many great questions that were asked after we posted our first positive case,” said health officials.
“From the beginning of this COVID-19 outbreak, we have been following guidance from CDC and the Dept. of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) when conducting investigations. Although the same guidance is used on all cases, the information that is released will vary for many different reasons as explained below.”
- When a person contracts the virus, there is an incubation period of 1 to 14 days, with 5-6 days being most common for beginning to see symptoms (fever, chills, cough, etc). A person might develop symptoms any time after the first day, but will only be contagious starting 2 days prior to developing symptoms, and most contagious when their symptoms are the worst.
- For example, if you are exposed on Monday, but don’t develop symptoms until Saturday (5 days later), you would be considered to have become contagious on Thursday, 2 days prior to your symptoms starting. All the people that you came in contact with during those first 3 days, (between Monday and Wednesday) would not be considered a contact and need not be quarantined.
- A person is considered a contact to a case if they are a household member, an intimate partner, or a person who you have had prolonged exposure with, meaning they were within 6 feet for at least a 10-minute period of time. When doing the investigation, if all contacts of the person are able to be identified, there is no reason to announce the places where the contact occurred. However, if there was contact with a person that they cannot identify, then an announcement would be made of the times and locations of exposure.
- Again, our first case did not work or have unknown contacts in the 48 hours prior to developing symptoms and began her quarantine the same day. Our second case was already on quarantine in the 48 hours prior to developing symptoms.
- As stated before, HIPAA laws do not allow location identification for population areas smaller than 20,000. DHSS has authorized us to inform the county, but that is as small as we are allowed to narrow it down.
- It is important that each and every one of us continue to practice basic preventive measures to help decrease the spread of the illness. These measures include: avoiding contact with people who are sick, covering coughs and sneezes, proper hand-washing, cleaning frequently used surfaces, and staying home when sick.
