During the recent surge of Covid-19 cases, there have been questions, or complaints, about how local medical and health officials are handling the virus.
Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough answered some of those in his recent visit to KPCW.
There have been some mixed reports about the ability of local citizens to get Covid testing from Intermountain Health Care. At Monday’s meeting of the County Health Board, some of the Board members said there have been instances where locals have had contact with infected individuals. But they were told by IHC that to be tested, they had to be sick, or show symptoms.
Rich Bullough said to clarify that, he checked with the director of the Park City Hospital.
“I texted Lori Weston immediately during that call, and Lori responded back that they are testing asymptomatic individuals who have been in contact with a confirmed positive case—but at five days out. And that’s because less than five days, you get a high rate of false negatives. We’re continuing to pursue that. What may have occurred in that particular exchange is, it may have been less than five days when those individuals went in to get tested. So we’re trying to work that out. My experience, though, has been that—I know individuals on the flip side of that coin, who have been contacts, and have gone in and have said, “I’ve been in contact, I’m asymptomatic” and they’ve been tested.”
On another topic, we asked about the report that seven businesses around Summit County were the object of complaints because they weren’t complying with the mask mandate.
Bullough said they were given notice, but ultimately they were not fined.
“Rather than shaming them into compliance, we worked with em. And they are in compliance. We’ve done follow-up visits. And in fact we have pulled the notices of violation, because they are in compliance. We’ll continue to do inspections.”
The names of the businesses have not been disclosed by the county.
The results of county restaurant inspections are public record, by state law. However, Bullough said these seven businesses were not eateries. He said if a local restaurant wasn’t obeying the mask mandate, they would make that public.
Bullough added, though, that Summit County has the highest mask utilization in the state. He said that has been driven by the business community.
