Distance, barriers ‘are your friends’

Cd’A School Board hosts workshop with Panhandle Health on reopening plans

COEUR d’ALENE — As Coeur d’Alene School District Trustee Lisa May put it Monday evening, the school board is “just one small piece” of this pandemic puzzle.

“Is it fair to say if we don’t slow down the rate of community transmission, that it will be less likely that we start school in the fall?” she asked Panhandle Health District staff epidemiologist Jeff Lee during a special board workshop Monday evening.

Lee said he would agree, to which May expressed her anxiety about successfully executing reopening plans when COVID-19 cases are on the rise. She asked Lee what should be done as a community to slow the spread.

“How can we implore our citizens to take every action to control community spread, get our numbers down, so we can open school?" May said. "We’re one small piece and we need a broader coalition."

Lee said that's the key word — "community."

“This has to be a community effort," he said. "This has to be not the school, not the health department, not the hospital, not some other organization, but the entire community as a whole.”

Lee said the chain of infection can only be broken a few ways.

“You either block the germs coming from the source, you put the susceptible person far enough away that the germs coming from the infected host can’t reach them, or you make the susceptible person not susceptible. That’s what vaccines are for," he said. "We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have a standard regimen for treatment.”

Herd immunity is another way to break the chain, but that requires about 67% of a population, or in this case 187,000 North Idahoans, to have the virus and recover. So far less than 1% of the population has been known to contract the virus.

Both Lee and PHD director Lora Whalen made it clear that if teachers and students are wearing face masks in schools, the risk of infection will be reduced.

"For whatever reason, people feel this is a violation of their freedoms," Lee said. "I typically always wear pants when I go into a store or restaurant. It says, ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service,’ so I figure that pants are optional, but I wear them. I don’t feel that my rights are violated whatsoever.

"Our world is changing," he said. "We have infectious disease. And this is a wake-up call."

The school board — and schools everywhere — have much to ponder as the summer inches closer to the commencement of the 2020-2021 school year. The board hosted Whalen and Lee to seek information regarding COVID in Kootenai County as it drafts reopening plans.

"We're in uncharted territory," Whalen said.

She and Lee presented the data they attempted to present at the disrupted PHD board meeting last week. The five northern counties that PHD covers have more than 1,200 COVID cases. Kootenai County is now experiencing close to 100 new cases every day.

Whalen said North Idaho's transmission is "certainly moderate, if not substantial," but she said that doesn't necessarily mean schools should be closed. It depends on what interventions will be implemented.

"Do you have the social distancing in place? Do you have the masking? Are you role-modeling the masking? Masking works," she said. "This is a fluid situation we're in; the data changes, the data evolves. And now we're starting to see a lot more literature on masking. And it's really common sense, if you think about it. If I cough, this mask is going to catch it."

May asked a question about portable classrooms and air exchange to create safe environments for students.

"Distance is your friend. Barriers are your friends," Lee said. "And those are your tools right now."

A draft of a school reopening plan is expected to be brought to the board Aug. 3.