Dr. Jim Shames on the 17 new coronavirus cases in Jackson County Friday

Jackson County set a new, single-day record for new cases on Friday, July 31.

Department says the county has a new record high number for one day coronavirus cases.

It's reporting 17 new cases today.

Joining newswatch 12 today to discuss jackson county's increase in coronavirus cases is dr. jim shames with the county's health department.

Dr. shames, thank you for joining us today.

My pleasure.

Glad to be here, dr. schames besides the high number of cases being reported recently, are there any trends that you're seeing that are particularly alarming?

That is, yeah.

Is the trend that is particularly alarming.

Is the numbers keep going up and up, up and up.

And, um, yeah, i think, uh, yesterday, uh, santi reported the most hospitalized patients for covid that they've seen so far.

I think 10, i'm not sure what our local providence numbers are, but all indications are that, uh, we're seeing more disease and more serious disease.

Should this trend continue.

How soon before we begin to see an impact on our local hospital's ability to handle these cases.

Well, we are all already some impact.

Um, i do know that the hospitals had lots of time to prepare for a surgeon patients.

And, uh, i'm quite confident that even if the numbers go up, that our local health care facilities can respond to the challenge.

But, um, even if we're not overwhelmed and i certainly hope we're not just an increased number of hospitalized patients just indicates there's, there's more, really sick people in jackson county, uh, from kobe's oh, in general, how many of those new cases are being discovered through contact tracing?

Well, um, contact tracing.

Is is a way to, you know, expand what you know, so that ultimately many of them cases are from contact tracing in the sense that you have an identified case, you explore who they've had contact with.

Is there a symptomatic get, get tested, and then you're done.

If i'm more cases, i don't know the exact numbers, but a significant number of them are coming through contact tracing and contact investigation.

Now recently doctors burks and foundry are suggesting that face shields or goggles might be considered for people to help slow the spread.

Now, ho how likely is one to become infected with contact through the eyes?

I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that.

It's, you know, once somebody gets covid, it's kinda hard to tell where it came from.

It's a mucus membrane.

Uh, we do know that other viral infections can come through the eyes.

So it's certainly a good idea to protect.

You know, your eyes, your nose and your mouth, uh, from, uh, from, from the disease, in terms of, uh, a face shield, facials are fairly protective for virus coming to you.

That is to say, if somebody within your vicinity dropped from them would tend to stay on the face shield rather than yeah.

Through to you.

Certainly if it's fitting well below, you know, below your chin and around the sides of your face, um, it's less effective protecting others from you.

It's kind of the opposite of masks where mass will trap particles close to your face and protect.

Others from you, but a little less effective the other way around and in a healthcare setting where, um, you know, the risks are quite high.

It's not uncommon for folks to, uh, be wearing both mass and face shields, which is currently the recommendation from the oha.

You say that this is a critical time.

What are the consequences?

If people do not follow those recommendations that you're making.

Well, at some point we may lose the tool of contact tracing.

I mean, if, if you can contact trays 50 people and you've got 200, you know, that are infected.

And then that, that continues day after day.

At some point you've lost control and you have widespread community spread.

And our concern is that that's the trend.

Where we're headed.

And, uh, i think we still have time to turn this back, but it's gonna take a concerted effort by everybody who lives here