Will this past weekend in north-central West Virginia be the one that turns out to be a super-spreader for COVID?
That’s what Ed Abbott of the Monongalia County Health Department was wondering last week.
After all, said Abbott, who is the department’s program manager for infection control and disease prevention, this is the weekend where literally thousands of people gathered across the region.
Saturday’s WVU-Penn State football game brought a sell-out crowd to Milan Puskar Stadium and booming business to bars and restaurants across the Morgantown area.
Right down Interstate 79 in Clarksburg, Harrison County, the Italian Heritage Festival, was another a big draw — Mountaineer football, or no.
And WVU and Monongalia County Schools are both back in session.
There’s all that, he said, with COVID still upon the land.
“Well, the thing is, people these days don’t get tested like they used to,” Abbott said this past Thursday, as he was looking ahead to the weekend’s events.
Part of that, he said, might be the result of a kind of collective, post-pandemic awareness also out there.
That is, COVID is now so much a part of the proceedings, that people generally seem to now know the difference between, say, a bad cold — opposed to the contagion.
“People might buy a home test and if they’re positive, they’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve got it.’ That makes getting actual case numbers tricky for us.”
Or, he adds, they might not buy a home test at all.
They may also have been out in the community while just not feeling that great, which is also worrisome, he added.
“That’s how you spread COVID,” he said.
Americans, however, will be able to get free virus test kits mailed to their homes, starting in late September, the U.S. Health and Human Services said last week.
U.S. households will be able to order up to four COVID-19 nasal swab tests when the federal program reopens, according to the website, COVIDtests.gov., the agency said.
For now, Abbott said, Morgantown’s local health community is taking a common-sense response to the contagion.
Get vaccinated or boosted if you haven’t already.
Stay home from work or school if you’re not feeling well.
Wear a mask in public, if you think you’re coming down with COVID — or you’re just getting over it.
That’s the same prescription currently being followed in Mon schools, said Susan Haslebacher, the district’s director of student health services.
She said there are a number of COVID cases among students and teachers in the district, which goes into its third week of the new year today after the break for Labor Day.
“That’s no more than if you were looking at colds or the flu,” she said.
In the meantime, she said, parents need to remember that symptoms can pop up anywhere from two days to two weeks, should their child have come into contact with a classmate with COVID.
Other measures, presented by the district, should you or your child fall ill:
• Stay home and isolate yourself from others in your home.
• Contact the school nurse to report your child is positive for COVID while also providing the date of testing.
• Your child will need to stay home and away from others until at least 24 hours after there is no fever (without fever-reducing medications).
• For the next five days following the return to school, your child is encouraged (not required) to wear a mask while getting tested for other respiratory viruses, such as RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, which is just as common in kids and it is older adults.
Haslebacher agrees with her colleague at the health department on the current COVID ethos, and how it’s now woven into everyone’s day-to-day.
“We need to realize that’s it’s just a way of life now,” she said.
“We can’t just stop — but we can still be cognizant of it and considerate of our neighbors.”
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