Photo: TRPHD epidemiologist Dr. Aravind Menon discusses COVID-19 spread among area youth.
KEARNEY, Neb. (KGFW) – Kearney leaders were updated on COVID-19 in a Tuesday Zoom. Two Rivers Public Health Department epidemiologist Dr. Aravind Menon says young people are ‘driving’ the virus locally.
“It’s really being driven by people between the ages of 18 and 30. And, so while that does include college students and we’ve been concerned about, you know it’s not just about what they do but the chances of their overall interaction, we think college students drove a lot of that starting from July-August; but we also think people over the age of 22 or 23 to 29 years of age,” says Dr. Menon, noting that “Kearney is a fairly young city and there are a lot of young people.”
Two Rivers director Jeremy Eschliman says distancing is still the best way to protect yourself.
“The gold standard truly is social distancing. If you can be outside, that’s our very best option. If you can’t be, you’re inside, still maybe should be wearing a mask. And, if you think about the dispersion of molecules – if we’re inside we are recycling air in a lot of ways. We don’t realize it all the time. It’s why we see this time of year increased instances of other respiratory type diseases.”
Eschliman says schools provide a good test case for masks.
“We have seen strong evidence looking at our own schools that, how the things that we’ve talked about: social distancing, wearing masks, washing hands and hygiene – how they are so affective. And it’s really a combination of all those factors that is the most effective solution. We’ve seen classrooms where they just, quite frankly, can’t social distance – it’s within six-feet – yet the mask has remained an area that has been resilient to the spread of the disease. That’s why we just have found, even though science is always lagging and research is lagging, we’ve seen from our own investigation. And it’s why we’re such strong proponents of it, is it’s effective.”
So, if everyone were to adhere to guidelines, what would the Health Dept. consider as successfully containing the spread?
“One notion, a number that’s been thrown out there… a number that’s pretty well established: 50 cases per million population. So, if you look at prevalence of for us, doing the basic math, 5 cases per 100,000 on a daily average,” Eschliman says. “If we’re at that level, that would be terrific. We haven’t seen that level since probably April, May, June – prior to when directed health measure really were relaxed and people went out about their daily lives.”
Tomorrow, we’ll dive further into our local district’s death numbers and why, even though they are low, Dr. Menon says health officials are very concerned.
