Chelan-Douglas Health District Says Area Making Progress, but Work Remains

At Monday's Chelan-Douglas Health District Board meeting, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Malcolm Butler provided an update on the two-county area saying with economies reopening and mobility increasing, there's both good and bad news.

"Masking has been broadly adopted and I anticipate we should start to see the impact of that by August. School reopening is unlikely if we cannot bend the curves and we will not recover without significant, collective behavioral changes."

The current number of positive cases, as of Monday, is 423 per 100,000 people in the two-county area.

Dr. Butler says the increase in numbers of positives can only be partially attributed to increased testing because the positive rate is still fairly high.

He's also been working with schools on preparing for the fall saying there's a need to classify in-person instruction as essential.

"I believe that everybody in the educational profession and pediatricians believe that there really is not a good substitute for classroom teaching, especially in the earlier ages. We need to make educators essential workers and we need to assure that as essential workers, schools get onto the emergency management PPE distribution list."

He also expressed concern over the number of visitors that have been coming to the area.

"I have spoken to the residents of [Chelan and Leavenworth] and been told multiple times that they have never seen the crowds that they are seeing on the weekends. I cannot explain why the state parks are not limiting the number of people who are there. I think all parks need to start limiting the crowds that are forming."

Dr. Butler says the goal to move forward in phases, when available, was less than 100 positives per 100,000 people, preferably close to 50 and dropping.