BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – In the past week, Brown County has confirmed its first three coronavirus cases. Through interviews with those people county health officials identified 19 others deemed medium to high risk for infection.
“The medium or high risk were asked to self-quarantine and for a period of about four days,” said Ted Shove with Brown County Health and Human Services.
“At that point, if they’re not showing symptoms then they go through basically this de-quarantine process.”
A high or medium risk individual is someone who was within six feet of a person who tested positive for COVID-19. The contact was either in an enclosed space or for an extended period of time. A low risk person is someone who came into contact with a confirmed patient, but it wasn’t within six feet or for an extended time.
While the county always alerts high and medium risk people, Shove tells FOX 11 low risk contacts aren’t necessarily reached immediately.
“It could be a letter or an email or a phone call. It largely depends on how quickly and how widespread that contact list is within that particular case.”
In Brown County’s cases, two of the positive individuals had 3 medium/high risk contacts each. The other case had 13 medium/high risk contacts and potential community spread having been at the Brown County Courthouse, which has since been cleaned and cleared for public use.
“What we haven’t seen yet is any relationship, specific relationship, between any of the confirmed cases, their contacts, and any of the other confirmed cases and their contacts,” said Shove.
While a lot of time is spent on how many confirmed cases each county has, state health officials admit the numbers are likely much higher. That’s because people with mild symptoms are rarely tested here and data from other countries shows as high as 90 percent of people that have the infection don’t show any symptoms requiring medical care.
“That could mean for every individual that we test positive for the infection, there are 10 individuals in the community with mild symptoms who don’t seek care,” said Dr. Ryan Westergaard, Chief Medical Officer for the state’s Bureau of Communicable Diseases.
Under that logic, for Brown County’s three known cases, there could be 30 unknown cases. It means the county can’t truly trace the contacts for everyone who has the virus, making social distancing even more important.
State health officials say they’ve sent 60 workers to local health departments to help trace who might have been in contact with someone who has coronavirus.
Brown County says it has been able to handle its contact tracing without using state resources. However, the state has sent the county some of its employees to help with other aspects of the pandemic.
