McLean County health officials don’t want a repeat of late August and early September when COVID-19 cases spiked after some Illinois State University students returned to Normal from summer break.
That’s why representatives of the county health department want to meet with ISU and Town of Normal officials to develop a plan to mitigate COVID spread after students return to Normal following winter and spring breaks.
“We want to take what we learned in September,” county health department Administrator Jessica McKnight said Wednesday night following the monthly meeting of the county Board of Health.
“How can we use what we learned in the fall semester and apply it to the spring semester?” she said. “What might we expect in the spring semester and how can we plan ahead? The goal is to control the spread of COVID-19 in the community.”
During the board meeting, held virtually and at the Government Center, board President Carla Pohl said health department officials would meet with ISU representatives to discuss how to limit COVID spread after students return to campus in January and following spring break.
While some students are on campus and others are doing remote learning, the university is transitioning to all remote learning after Thanksgiving until the end of the semester before Christmas. That means many students will be gone between Thanksgiving but returning in January.
In addition, ISU decided recently to go ahead with spring break to give students and staff a mental health break, even though some universities have canceled spring break, fearing students would travel, then return to campuses with COVID and spread it around.
Pohl’s fear is that “in March, we will have a repeat performance of September” when COVID cases rose in McLean County, largely because some students returned to Normal and didn’t adhere to social distancing guidelines.
McKnight said discussions with ISU and Normal officials will include COVID testing, contact tracing and personal responsibility — three things that help to control the spread of the virus.
“We know winter already is going to be rough with flu and travel and the holidays,” McKnight said after the meeting. “As a community, how can we start now with planning?
“We are amping up our testing and contact tracing and we want to provide more messaging about personal responsibility,” she said.
Some messaging will apply to the general population, not only college students.
“We will try to work on some COVID-19 messaging, especially as it relates to (controlling COVID spread during) the holidays,” Pohl said.
Also at the meeting, the board learned that the health department’s Take Cover Initiative with Illinois Heart & Lung Foundation, in which the health department collects homemade masks and distributes them to non-profit agencies, has a surplus of masks. Agencies interested should contact Tammy Brooks at the health department.
— The Pantagraph.
