Public Health Director Questioned On COVID As School Resumes

By Denise Seyfer

PORT WASHINGTON--As Ozaukee County schools start to reopen, Ozaukee County Board supervisors asked many COVID-related questions to Washington-Ozaukee Public Health Director Kirsten Johnson, during her board meeting update on Wednesday.

“We’ve hired 10 or more contact tracers just to handle the schools,” Johnson said.

Johnson explained that the decision to close schools if cases arise isn’t black and white. Schools seem to want a clear direction about what to do.

“I think it’s really dependent upon the scenario,” she said, adding if 10 teachers are out, that’s a completely different situation than 10 kids being out due to COVID.

COVID-19 positive tests in Ozaukee County are starting to come down after a recent spike of cases. Only 3 or 4 people in Ozaukee are currently hospitalized, which equals 9.15 percent, Johnson said when asked about hospitalizations in Ozaukee.

According to several school districts, they are using the public health data that shows COVID risk factors like cases, burden and trajectory to assist them in making decisions as to open or go virtual.

Port Washington Supervisor Daniel Becker asked why 100 cases per 100,000 people was considered high in Ozaukee.

“That’s about how many people die of the flu each year,” he said. “We don’t consider that high at all, and in this case, we’re only talking about new cases, not deaths. It just seems like way too high of a threshold to overcome.”

Johnson said, the reason it’s high is because the risk of transmission is high. Washington-Ozaukee Public Health data shows that risk burden changes from moderately high to high with 100 new cases reported over a two week period per 100,000 residents.

“Achieving the low category just seems impossible, because that was 10 cases per 100,000 people,” Becker added. “...It just struck me as way too unreasonable of a number to hit.”

Grafton Supervisor Paul Melotik asked the public health director about the positivity rate and what constitutes a case.

Now, in Ozaukee County there is an average of eight percent of people per day that test positive. However, data shows the positivity rate is increasing because the number of people getting tested is decreasing, according to Johnson’s public health data.

“Ideally, we want to see a positivity rate of 5 percent,” she said.

The total percentage of positives per 100,000 population for the past seven days for all ages is 15.3 percent. In the last seven days, children account for 28.6 percent of positives with the most common age group being 18.

Johnson further explained that even though some people may get tested multiple times, they are only being counted once.

“You don’t get counted unless we have lab results,” she added.

Ozaukee County’s estimated population for 2019 is just under 90,000 people, according to the Ozaukee County website.