This new system, which department leaders say will likely start next week, will involve people who test positive or come in contact with someone who tests positive getting their isolation or quarantine orders through an online form filled out by themselves and the person they contracted the virus from, rather than getting them from the county.

If someone needs an order to be excused from work, school or for other reasons, ECPH says they can get a self-affirmation of isolation or quarantine form to fill out on its website, starting next week.

These forms will have the same effect as an order of isolation from ECPH.

ECPH Program Coordinator Andrea Whitmarsh said the county will clarify more details before the policy starts.

“By now, we all know what we should be doing to protect others and prevent spread when we test positive for COVID-19,” ECPH Director Linda Beers said in a press release. “This process now emphasizes personal responsibility for doing the right thing and I commend the vast majority of our citizens who have complied with public health orders.”

Whitmarsh said other counties in New York have been adopting policies like this one.

“Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, as does the virus,” Essex County Board of Supervisors Chairman Shaun Gillilland said in the press release. “In an effort to reduce the burden on the local health department, ECHD will move to an individually managed, self-serve process of isolation or quarantine.”

ECPH will not be calling all contacts with positive test results or contacts as they have done in the past, but that does not mean the county is not collecting data on the spread of the virus.

“People don’t have to report to us that they’re positive. We’re going to know,” Whitmarsh said. “We just simply cannot keep up and reach people in a timely manner to give them their isolation orders.”

She said people are calling the health department themselves asking for isolation orders to document their absence from work or school, and the staff is having a hard time issuing them in a timely manner.

When there’s a delay in the isolation orders, Whitmarsh said that could mean more time when someone who is positive is required to still attend work or school.

Whitmarsh said this means there are likely many more people with active cases who have not been told to isolate by the county yet.

“Clearly, we should have more people under an active order of isolation,” she said.

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‘Unmanageable’

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Whitmarsh said when community spread of the virus spikes, it decreases how effective contact tracing is as a tool to mitigate spread.

“It becomes even less effective when an unmanageable volume of cases prevents timely isolation and case investigation,” she wrote. “The post-holiday COVID surge is hitting Essex County hard, straining a public health system that was already stretched thin.”

This week, Beers said the county has averaged over 100 new cases per day since Dec. 29. She said as the state focuses on testing to keep students and staff safe when they return to school, she anticipates the case numbers will continue to grow.

A graph ECPH provided showing the number of new cases reported each day since January 2021 shows the line remaining below 50 for the entire year before spiking in December 2021 and January 2022 to nearly 100 and sometimes almost 150 new cases per day.

“We thought we were surging before,” Whitmarsh said.

There are several reasons for the surge.

“I really think it’s tied to those holiday gatherings,” she said.

As it gets colder, people are spending more time gathering indoors, where transmission is higher. Also, the omicron COVID-19 variant, which has become common in the U.S., has a much higher transmission rate than previous variants.

Vaccination is able to keep people out of hospitals and morgues, she said, but they still can test positive, especially with the omicron variant, and are required to isolate to not spread it further.

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Staffing and funding

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This policy change is essential because the ECPH’s limited staff can’t keep up with the level the pandemic is at right now.

“We went through a point early on in the pandemic where we basically turned over more than half of our staff that we had when the pandemic started. … Pandemics are stressful,” Whitmarsh said.

Now, she said staff numbers have doubled since this time last year, and the department’s efforts are “maximized.” They are contact tracing, conducting case investigations, facilitating vaccinations, and overseeing school testing and surveillance.

Whitmarsh said as the pandemic continues, there is a strong need for more people to enter the public health profession. ECHD has been getting help from interns and other departments.

“At some point it becomes a funding issue,” she said. “There are only so many things you can do to increase the workforce.”

Low staffing has been an issue for a long time.

Funding for public health had been cut for years before the pandemic, Whitmarsh said.

“I really think this has been an eye-opener, hopefully, for government at all levels to understand the value of public health,” she said. “I’m hoping that there’s a realization that resources need to be redirected.”

ECPH has other jobs aside from COVID-19, too, but things like chronic disease are not as obvious as a communicable virus.

“We always said, if public health is doing its job and working well, most people don’t notice that we’re here,” Whitmarsh said.

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Franklin County numbers

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Franklin County Public Health reported one new COVID-19 death on Monday. Staff were not immediately available to provide more information.

Franklin County has recorded 31 COVID-19-related deaths over the course of the pandemic.

On Monday, there were eight people hospitalized at Adirondack Health in Saranac Lake who had tested positive for COVID-19, with two on ventilators.

Franklin County recorded 56 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday. This week the county has seen an average of around 50 to 60 new cases per day.

There were 249 active cases of COVID-19 in Franklin County on Monday.

Harrietstown leads the county with the most number of active COVID-19 cases, according to a map FCPH produced using data from Sunday. The populations centers at the southern end of the county — Tupper Lake and Saranac Lake — have usually had fewer active cases than Malone, the larger town to the north, but on Sunday, Malone had 27 active cases, while Tupper Lake had 41 and Harrietstown had 69. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in the northwest corner of the county had 61 active cases.

Four of these cases were inmates at Bare Hill Correctional, a state prison in Malone.

There were 539 individuals in isolation or quarantine in Franklin County on Monday, because they either tested positive or came in contact with someone who tested positive.

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Vaccine clinic

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FCPH will hold a Pfizer and Moderna booster vaccine clinic in Saranac Lake from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Jan. 26 at the Saranac Lake Free Library at 109 Main St.

The Pfizer shot is for people ages 16 and up and the Moderna shot is for people ages 18 and up. Drop-ins are welcome but will be limited dependent on the amount of vaccine available.

To register for the Moderna shot, to go https://on.ny.gov/32WJXgs. To register for the Pfizer shot, go to https://on.ny.gov/3EPnUWr.