One year later, Southern Oregon still grappling with COVID-19

The first known cases of coronavirus in southern Oregon were detected in March of 2020.

While much has changed since then, the pandemic hasn't left.

Tuesday.

Another storm system could impact our region later wednesday into thursday.

Alright, thanks matt.

As we continue our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and look back at this past year, we remember some of our first local cases.

Josephine county announced their first case on march 20th 2020.

Since then the county has announced more than 24 hundred cases and 57 people have lost their lives due to covid 19.

We caught up with mike weber with josephine county public health about what made the coronavirus a public health emergency and the challenges this type of emergency presents.

What makes this a public health emergency or what makes anything a public health emergency?

And there's two primary things.

The first one is something that significantly impacts the capacity of the private healthcare industry.

Uh, anything that can overwhelm the healthcare industry is a public health concern.

And that was a much bigger concern early on for us because of a lack of resources too.

To utilize, whether it be ppe or even things like sterile tubing, right?

Those things, private health industries need those things.

And then as we moved forward, uh, eventually it got to the point of the, the capacity itself, simply being overwhelmed too, too high patient load.

So that piece of it, we will see that trend down over time.

But the other thing that truly makes the public health concern is an inability of the citizenry to, uh, to make decisions that can keep themselves safe.

Uh, the example i gave was flint michigan's water resources.

The citizens didn't have a mechanism to keep themselves safe in that emergency.

And until you give that control and that capacity to the individual citizen, um, that, that public health emergency really stays.

And that's what the vaccine needs for us, that the vaccine being available.

Becoming more and more widely available as we move forward, uh, means that people are able to decide for themselves, uh, what actions they take and they have a viable mechanism to keep themselves safe.

This week marks one year since covid 19 was declared a pandemic by the world health organization and by the united states jackson county medical director, dr. jim james joins us now to look back at the pandemic, how it's affected the county.

Thanks so much for being here.

I'm glad to be here.

So with the benefit of hindsight, how has the county performed you feel in responding to the pandemic?

Um, i think we've done well.

Um, certainly.

People have stepped up, uh, work really hard hours, you know, stretch themselves.

Uh, we always could have more personnel, you know, but, um, so i feel really proud of, of what we've done at jackson county public health.

And when i look out and i talked to our cohorts around the state, everybody's working hard, everybody's really dedicated to doing whatever they can.

For the public.

Uh, that's not to say we haven't made mistakes.

There've been missteps.

Of course.

Uh, you know, we've, we've, we've made some assumptions that turned out not to be true, but in general, i think it's been, uh, a good time, um, in terms of a spread of core morale for public health, because we know that we're, we're all working towards a really important goal.

Logistically, would you have done anything different knowing now what you might not have known six, eight, 10 months ago.

I think so, but you know, the situation has changed so much.

Um, you know, the kinds of guidance that we had early on while the pandemic was still increasing, there was a really important reliance on contact tracing and case investigation, isolation, quarantine, the things properly probably are not the most important strategy now.

Um, now the strategy would be, let's get vaccine into arms as quickly as possible to, um, i guess what i'm trying to say is, um, it's, it's a little hard to put yourself back three months, six months, nine months, because what we know now, and the situation now requires a different kind of focus.

Um, i don't, i don't think there's anything in particular.

I think we could have used a lot more staff.

And a lot more material.

I mean, if we had lots of testing, we would've done things differently.

If we had three times as a member, the number of case investigators and contact tracers, you know, we could have really reached out given people what they needed.

Information wise, resources to stay at home could have, you know, maybe reached out and given people, uh, public messaging that might've been more effective.

So.

I think we did well with what we had.

You mentioned messaging, have you ever run up against some of the negativity you have surrounding covid in any of the other public health campaigns you may have undertaken?

Well, sure.

Um, i think childhood immunizations would be an example of a fairly large outspoken group of people who are afraid of vaccines for their children.

They have a very different.

Scientific take on the benefit, the value of vaccinations, and that's a kind of an uphill, uphill battle.

And, uh, that would be one of an example.

So yes, this is, this is kind of what we find ourselves facing in public health.

It's just a little different now it's on a much broader scale and, um, it's part of a, it's part of a whole phenomenon of distrust.

That is a little unusual.

For those who do trust the vaccine and want to get the vaccine, how soon do you think it will be before everyone in jackson county who wants to get that shot will be able to get that shot.

We're expecting a large increase in, in vaccine coming into the county at the end of this month.

And the administration clearly is working hard.

The national.

You know, the national efforts of the cdc are working very hard to increase the amount of vaccine.

I don't know when that's going to come to us.

I'm guessing early april, maybe.

And that'd be about the right timing as well, because we're going to need a lot of vaccine for all the people who will be eligible at that point.

Jackson county medical director, dr. in siskiyou county, public health officials say they've seen a range of impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

We spoke with doctor aaron stutz, siskiyou county medical director who says it's not only been a trying year for the communities within siskiyou county but also for public health officials, saying that medical professionals have received a lot of frustration from the community at times when restrictions were implemented for safety.

We faced criticism from the community at large over our decisions and decision making process we've been working extra hours time to time and figuring out where to put our efforts we only have a small staff compared to other counties so we don't have the resources available that other larger counties do so thats put strain on our staff for sure doctor stutz says the level of stress on people is unprecedente d, especially for public health professionals.

The stress in combination with constant criticism has taken a toll on many medical professionals mental health, according to stutz.

Stutz also says he never expected all the decisions surrounding covid to be right, it's an unprecidented situation that is constantly evolving -- he county prepares for this next step, health officials are taking a look back on the pandemic and the science that helped get them to this point.

The county's first positive coronavirus case was detected on march 7th.

She says the county was fortunate enough to not see a covid-19 death until early july-- but a month before that she says they already knew of work being done for possible vaccines.

She says in june it seemed like vaccines weren't going to be viable for another 18 months-- while others were predicting christmas time-- and she says, thanks to the science that was used, this prediction was able to become a reality.

I think that really.

It's pretty amazing to think about that.

We live in a time that work was already being done towards the sars virus.

They were able to piggyback back on that.

And now a year later we're seeing vaccine hit our most vulnerable populations.

Valeree lane says every