COVID-19 cases increasing in Allen County, so is response from health officials

The battle against COVID-19 has been going for months, but now we’ve reached a critical time when businesses are open and schools are about to do the same.

Hunter petroviak.

Thanks for joining us tonight.allen county covid-19 cases are starting to slightly tick up again..just as schools prepare to reopen.

Tonight the allen county board of health met to discuss how it's fighting the spread of the caleb fox 55 saylor was at the meeting and is live downtown to explain how things will look in the near future.

Caleb?the health department continues to work on a number of fronts to help limit the spread of covid 19, that includes working with healthcare facilities, obtaining and distributing ppe supplies and providing guidance for schools, and as the state reopens, they are taking extra steps to help slow the spread of the virus.

The battle against covid-19 has been going for months, but not we e reached a critica time when businesses are open and schools are about to do the new allen county health commissioner, matthew sutter says he has some concerns that the battle is about to get harder here in the county hile nationally, we e seen a huge incre cases, we e been pretty steady just until the last few days, but i e been concerned that we will follow the national trend, just a little bit behind it.

Fight, the health department says its working with local healthcare facilities to increase testing capabilities here locally, and the county has taken contact tracing back from the state, hoping for better resulhat we have the ability to do from a local health agency is to actually make personal contact with people.

We can go knock on their doors, we can have conversations, we can connect them to social workers, we can do a lot of things that you can do from a remote call center.

Reopen, the health department has been working with them to do so safely.

Mindy waldron with the health department says they e provided information schools need to help limit the spread.

Lot of the thinge provided are algorithms, information on what the safety measures might look like, as well as faqs so they can get the most prominent questions answered in real time, and some template letters to help them if there is an exposure to notify parents and others.

And e ldron says they working on a way for schools to easily rehat cases we e creating is an online mechanism where it will be populated with the fields that need to be completed so that we would know a case has been identified or there has been exposure.

Gives us the front end info that we need, demographics, date, those types of things.

Wel see that, theyl be an alert while knowing how the virus will spread is unknown at this time, the health department sayse working hard to keep everyone as safe as possible.

Health department officials say early discussions are ongoing about covid vaccination when that happens, say they will draw on past experiences when it comes to protecting people in the future.reporting live in fort wayne, caleb saylor fox 55 news caleb