Hi my name is Cindy Farr. I am the
incident commander for the Missoula City
County Health Department COVID 19 response.
Today's Tuesday July 21st and this is my
daily briefing. To date we've had 180
cumulative positive cases in Missoula
County. We had 19 new positive cases come
in over the weekend and four new cases
come in since yesterday. 177 of those
cases were identified by testing and
three were epi linked. We've had 121
recoveries and one death and one
Missoula County resident is currently
hospitalized. We currently have 58 active
COVID 19 cases with more than 330 close
contacts. Active cases and their known
contacts will remain in quarantine and
isolation and will continue to be
monitored and supported as needed. The
state of Montana is reporting 2,712  cumulative
COVID cases which is up ninety seven
cases since yesterday. There are now
1,179  active
cases with 49 active hospitalizations
across the state and there have been 40
deaths to date related to COVID
nineteen in Montana. So first I just want
to say I hope you had a great weekend
and that your your week is off to a good
start. This week I continue serving in
the incident commander role and I'm also
covering the health officer role so the
Ellen Leahy, our health officer, can take
a much deserved rest. This is the first
opportunity that Ellen's had to take a
respite week since the beginning of
our incident response in March. Respite
time is time off that's available to all
Health Department staff who are working
the incident response. We try to rotate
our staff out as we can
allowing staff the opportunity to step
away from the response effort to rest
and reset ensuring that we can continue
responding to COVID 19 in a sustainable
manner moving into the future.
Since I'm serving in the Health Officer
role this week, I have additional
leadership meetings and additional
duties. While these duties precluded me
from holding a briefing yesterday, I am
happy to connect with you now and share
some really important information about
COVID in Missoula County. Today I'd like
to revisit the discrepancies
between local and state reporting which
I've previously discussed
but I feel like I need to revisit it
today in light of a significant
discrepancy and reporting of active and
recovered cases. Locally we have the most
accurate and current information
regarding active cases close contacts
and recovered cases and this is because
the local health department, our Missoula
City County Health Department, is the
first point of contact when there's a
positive COVID 19 case. Yesterday in
Missoula County we locally reported 58
active cases of which 19 were identified
over the weekend. The state was reporting
that Missoula County had 94 active cases
and 164 cumulative total cases. These
numbers were not an accurate reflection
of COVID 19 in Missoula County. I'm just
sharing this again because it's so
important. We continue sharing up-to-date
and accurate information in real-time as
we're able to. That information is posted
on our web site at missoula.co/cvirus. We
continue working with the state as we
have always done with infectious disease
reporting and investigating and we
continue doing the best that we can in
the place where we are with the data
that we have. We do take ownership of
these ongoing differences in the data at
the local level and continue taking
steps to ensure that we're maintaining
efficient and effective communication
especially as it relates to infectious
disease data. We can't speak to the
state's discrepancies other than to note
that there have been and there will
continue being discrepancies in state
and local reporting. This has more to do
with the volume of cases at the local and
 state level, state and local
staffing capacity, and the timing of the
standardized processes for opening a
case, investigating a case, tracing the
close contacts and then closing a case
when the patient moves into recovery.
Today our local and state numbers are in
closer alignment although there is still
some discrepancy. Locally we have 58
active cases, 121 recoveries in one death
for a total of 180 cases to date. Next
I'd like to talk a little bit about the
face covering mandates. Now that the
state of Montana is under a face
covering directive whereby people ages 5
and up residing in or visiting any
County with four or more active cases
need to wear face coverings to maintain, to remain in compliance with Governor
Bullock's directive.
Locally in our own County, people ages 5
and up must wear face covering when
they're inside public settings as well
as some outdoor settings outlined in the Governor's directive. Here our face
covering rule is not dependent upon the
number of active cases in our county. The
face covering rule remains in place
until further notice. The Health Officer,
Board of Health and I regularly meet and
remain in ongoing communication between
monthly standing meetings. We continue
reassessing COVID 19 data and
what that really means for the health
and safety measures for our community. A
face covering is a great tool to help
reduce the chances of asymptomatic or
pre-symptomatic exposure and
transmission of COVID 19. Remember that
asymptomatic means that individuals
never experience physical symptoms but
can carry the virus and can unknowingly
transmit it to others. Pre-symptomatic
individual is someone that will
eventually develop and display symptoms
and get sick. It refers to the period of
time in which someone is contagious but
they're not yet presenting with symptoms.
Continuing to cover our faces with cloth
face coverings that seal over the nose and
chin help to ensure that those
respiratory droplets stay inside the
covering and don't escape out to others.
The cloth covering is one of the is just
one tool that needs to be used in
conjunction with other safe behaviors
such as physical distancing, space
between individuals. We don't want you to
become complacent or think that a face
covering is the answer to it all. The
face covering needs to be just one part
of an integrated set of safety practices.
It's an effective tool that becomes more
effective whenever it's used in
conjunction with other safe behaviors
such as such as physical distancing. That
being said, I'd like to quickly revisit
the definition of a close contact as
this remains important when thinking
about ways that we can individually and
collectively flatten the curve here in
Missoula County. The definition of a
close contact has changed across time
with more information. At one point the
CDC stated that a close contact with
someone that was with someone else for
10 minutes or more with fewer than six
feet between them. Now currently, the CDC
defines a close contact as someone that
is with someone else for 15 minutes or
more with less than 6 feet of space.
These 15 minutes can also be cumulative
so I can't stress that enough. Basically
think about all the different situations
that we find ourselves in throughout the
day. Maybe you have two or three work
meetings with the same people for 15
minutes at a time that actually means
that you've spent upwards of 45 minutes
with someone that could be considered a
close-contact particularly depending on
the setting of those workplace meetings.
If they're remote meetings you're very
likely good to go. If they were in person
meetings but spaced far apart with
safety measures in place like face
coverings you're also setting yourself
up for success. If they were in person
without safety measures in place all of
those people that were in that
group could potentially be close
contacts if one of them develops COVID
19 down the line. Another good example is
a restaurant or bar. Think about
waitstaff and servers arriving at the
tables to serve patrons. While they may
only be at a table for two or three
minutes at a time, they might very well
hit 15 minutes or exceed 15 minutes of
total time with any given table or
patron. So I revisit these topics in an
effort to empower you. I want you to have
the current accurate information in
order to understand the virus as well as
how we can keep COVID at bay. We are in
this together but we each need to play
our part so please continue
masking up for health and safety and
making sure that you're still
maintaining that six feet or more of
social distancing whenever you are
around other people and limit your
social circles keep them small so that
if you were to develop COVID 19 it
could more easily help us to do the
contact tracing and find out who your
close contacts are. So that's it for my
daily briefing for today. As always you
can subscribe to me on YouTube under my name Cindy Farr. That's CINDY FARR. Click
that little notification bell so you get
notified when additional videos are
uploaded. You can follow us on Facebook
at the Missoula City County Health
Department's Facebook page. You can track
our local data or find all kinds of
great information on our website at
missoula.co/cvirus and you can call two five eight
info if you have questions about COVID 
nineteen or if you would like to
schedule at
for COVID 19 through our drive through
testing facility. So that's it for
today until tomorrow everyone stay
healthy.
