Vanderburgh County Board of Health Discusses New Orange Zone Restrictions
Local health officials met Thursday to discuss Governor Holcomb's executive order placing new size limits on social gatherings in counties currently in the orange and red on Indiana's COVID-19 color-coded map.
The worst offender -- our largest community -- vanderburgh county.
Now health officials -- are re-thinking as they assess the impact of the new indiana restrictions on the river city.
44news reporter valerie lyons explains --- the next steps are vital to the county getting out of the orange zone.
Health officials are actually still waiting on the executive order from the governor's office -- they say they expect to have it by tomorrow -- and when they do -- they'll start working with the rest of the county in determining how to implement the new restrictions.
After several days with counts crossing the 100 case mark -- vanderburgh county -- one of indiana's hardest hit communities -- now classified as orange on the state's color coded map -- "over the past two weeks from the 24th of october through the 6th of november there were 1250 new cases."
And with the governor's latest executive order -- placing new restrictions on gatherings in orange and red counties -- vanderburgh will follow the new mandate -- "i think we treat everybody the same, if later on they relax obviously we can relax too but right now we have the backing of the governor to stay at 50 and no more."
While the board of health says the new limit on social gatherings is the right choice -- they think the county needs to do even more -- kenneth spear: "we need to make an awareness campaign with 6 foot distancing, wear your mask, wash your hands, use your hand sanitizer and if we can we would like to start our own contact tracing locally."
Officials say -- right now -- they don't know of any specific events causing the sure in cases across the county -- and that's because many of those testing positive are not completing their contact tracing -- joe gries: "65% of these folks aren't completion their initial interviews which is really difficult and makes it hard for us to gather better data to provide to not only local government leadership like the board to try and make some sound decisions."
The board hopes through improved contact tracing -- the community will be better able to control the spread of the virus.
