Yesterday South Dakota reported 320 new cases of coronavirus, six deaths, and 109 hospitalizations. That 109 is the highest number of people we’ve had in the hospital with covid-19, higher than our May 26 peak of 106.
(Psst—Kristi! “Flattening the curve” doesn’t count when the curve is 45% up from horizontal.)
Coronavirus are taking up 5% of South Dakota’s hospital beds, 8% of our ICU beds, and 5% of our ventilators. Still available: 46% of hospital beds, 33% of ICU beds, and 80% of ventilators… so room for plenty more, right?
Note: Austin, Texas has a population of 979,000, 11% more than South Dakota’s 885,000. The City of Austin’s Covid-19 Risk-Based Guidelines say that when weekly average hospital admissions exceed 40, we should restrict gatherings of more than ten people and keep open only and expanded list of essential businesses. South Dakota’s coronavirus hospitalizations have been above 40 for most of the pandemic.
But South Dakota’s new record for coronavirus hospitalizations isn’t the scariest pandemic news I’ve read this weekend. This tweet from fellow Aberdeen parent and writer Kelda Pharris is:
One of my children’s assistant principals made the call today about a close contact in my child’s class. He said I could treat it as a sddoh call bc they’re so swamped it could be days before they‘d be able to notify us. Thanks for being on this @govkristinoem [Kelda Pharris, tweet, 2020.09.12.]
The Aberdeen Central School District has sent two robocalls to my house twice since school started on August 18 to announce that someone at Aberdeen Central High School has tested positive for coronavirus. Each time, high school principal Dr. Jason Uttermark has said the state Department of Health would call to notify students and staff if they had been in “close contact” with the new positive case. Such a notification process is one of the procedures the Aberdeen Central school district included in its “Stronger Together” back-to-school plan to assure parents that it could reopen safely amidst the pandemic:
Having received no such call from DOH, I assumed our family was relatively safe. Reading my neighbor Ms. Pharris’s tweet, I realize that the lack of a call from DOH may just mean DOH doesn’t have enough staff to get any needed warning to us.
Of course, if the school districts are supposed to pick up the slack to notify parents and staff of close contacts, we may still not hear anything. We cobbled together our own hybrid model, in which our daughter is taking one class on campus and three at home. The “Off-Campus Virtual Learning Contract” we signed in July (see Appendix B of the back-to-school plan) promised, “A District staff member will make direct contact with students two times per week to identify assignments, monitor progress, and submit final grades for report cards/transcripts.” Four weeks into the school year, we have received one call. Aberdeen Central staff are apparently too overwhelmed keeping up with the mere 7% of students who chose online learning for this first quarter of the school year. When will they find the time to conduct their own coronavirus contact tracing and contact affected students, parents, and staff?
Pharris’s post draws comments from other districts indicating cause for more coronavirus alarm. Hoven Supeintendent Dr. Jeremy Hurd says the state is now changing its guidelines and leaving it up to schools to determine whether close contacts can come to school:
And evidently the Burke school district is having to take Monday off because they are short of teachers:
I also see that the Mobridge-Pollock School District has cancelled the middle school and JV football games it had planned for Monday.
South Dakota received $1.25 billion in coronavirus relief dollars to help public agencies and private entities respond to pandemic needs. Governor Noem has spent millions on national TV ads, spent thousands on subsidies for local arts groups, made vague promises of hundreds of millions for small businesses, and stashed over $600 million in the bank to earn millions in interest that she can spend on her whims. But she apparently hasn’t used that money or her influence to give the Department of Health the staff and phone lines it needs to do the contact tracing and calling South Dakotans need to protect their families from our state’s red-zone spread of coroanvirus.
I think that I have a 100%fool proof
defense against the Covid 19 virus.
I think that the Governor should take the lead on this.
Followed by the rest of the GOP Dopes.
Take a plastic bag.
Cover your head so that there is no exposure to the outside.
You are now 100% safe from any virus exposure.
I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.
Don’t hold your breath.
Have the teachers call the kids. They know them and have the time to do it. Easy fix, instead of blathering in blame.
grudz, What would one need to do to go about “having the teachers” do contact tracing and contact dozens of families? Issue some sort of “order”? Would there be additional compensation involved? Where would the funds come from?(talk about blather).
The public thinks that contract tracing is being done. Hopefully others pick up on this and get this out there so people know what is going on. I heard this same story from a Herreid parent.
They might be backlogged. We have yet to receive a call from DOH as of last Wednesday but immediately got a call from the school when our middle school daughter at Mobridge got quarantined due to close contact with other student testing positive.
If the school is contacting parents, I don’t think it’s a big deal. For the most part, DOH probably needs to concentrate on other cases not tied to schools. However, if the state has received funds to implement more contact tracing, might as well, because we’re probably going to need it.
Also Mobridge schools are closed down tomorrow for deep cleaning. Cases are picking up in Walworth county.
no sx123, the state doh has the responsibility to ALL the residents of SD-not sluffing this responsibility off to other. lesser entities like the schools. If Noem can’t supply the needs of the doh with Covid funding from the feds then these GOP legislators need to force the issue. She can’t treat those $$$$ like her own little bank account, the $$$ are the citizen’s money.
Last Thursday, my 6 neighbor kids were told to stay home until further notice from the Mobridge elementary and middle school. One child’s 2nd grade teacher tested positive for Covid so they all need to stay home. All the super spreader events, including our rodeo and all class reunion, Sturgis Rally, and ongoing activities are partially to blame. About 1% of the residents wear masks and no businesses require them. Social distancing is a joke and everything is just as if we’re living in the past. Cases are rising quickly in our county and town. Because we are 100 miles away from a hospital that can accommodate Covid patients, those who have needed more care are sent to Bismarck ND and as far away as Fargo. I don’t know any that were sent to SD facilities. That also applies to those on the SD side of Standing Rock Reservation and Cheyenne Eagle Butte. That skews the percentage of beds being used for both states. And it makes someone like me, old, with preexisting conditions, and germophobic (from my teaching days), feel vulnerable, unsafe and afraid. What’s worse is that this was all predictable and preventable. It’s going to get a great deal worse because we have no leadership from the governor, county commissioners, or city council. Anybody want to buy my house real cheap? I want to move to a blue state like east of us!!!!
Of course contact tracing is a lot easier when you push positivity rates down. Directly attacking the virus spread (i.e. the path to zero) seems so inexpensive to avoid living with this constant high level that jams up schools, day-care, businesses and raises hell with anxiety and citizen mental health. A “path to zero” virus plan in ADDITION to $400M for business, day-care, meat-packing small operations and others responds to desperate needs, but also attacks spread directly. What if SD budgets < $75M for this: 1/ hire another 200 contact tracers at $70k per year for $14 M; w/ mgt; tech; training add $15 M – or $29 M total. Add testing at $60 / test for 200,000 tests for $12 M; training, lab reports and reagents another $12 M – total of $24 M. Isolation costs another $5 M. Yes, these are only the roughest of estimates, but some plan like this should already have been promoted by Governor and be available for consideration. For under $75 M South Dakota could implement a working testing tracing masking etc. program; thereby making school and business life feasible again. The amounts here are astounding but with expertise; hard and quick work and legislative input this state could be much further down the road.
Kruel Kristi’s lack of any semblance of leadership on this life and death issue has created such a massive fustercluck, it’s just shocking. She’s no better than Inept Idiot when it comes to fulfilling constitutional duties to their citizens.
All in one shot, we have the absolute worst president ever coupled with several states, including SD, stuck with their worst governor ever. Good luck folks.
Grudz, if you were reading, you’d see that I pointed out the school can’t even get out the teacher calls they promised to the minority of parents who contracted for online learning this fall.