CALDWELL, Idaho — The Southwest District Health Board met for three-and-a-half hours on Tuesday to discuss how its handling COVID-19 cases.
Canyon County is in that district and has been one of the hot spots in the state for coronavirus.
There were no public health decisions or mandates made but a lot of discussion during the board meeting.
For the first 45 minutes the board took comments from the public and about two dozen people spoke up.
The majority of them said that they were against a mask mandate and some described how coronavirus has killed their business and they don't want the government to dictate their lives.
One of the discussions that really stood out was when board members talked about COVID cases and outbreaks in long-term healthcare facilities.
There are several facilities in Canyon County that have fared a lot worse than other counties in terms of outbreaks and COVID-related deaths.
Dr. Nikki Zogg, director of Southwest District Health, says she has a theory why.
“We have speculation that it might have something to do with the ventilation systems in some of those facilities, so myself and an industrial hygienist have been out to three facilities in the district in the last four days, and we won’t know, the environmental samples take about 10 days to come back," Zogg said. "There were definitely some areas where some ventilation concerns seem to be rising up and a little bit of infection control practices too, so we will be making some recommendations and hopefully see better outcomes in those long-term care facilities."
Zogg also says she's going to visit about five other long-term healthcare facilities in the district that have little to no covid cases to see what's working well there.
There was also a lot of discussion surrounding school opening back up, but there were no decisions or mandates that came out of this meeting.
At its meeting on July 23, the board voted to recommend a series of actions, including recommendations on social distancing and face coverings in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Board members repeatedly stressed that the recommendations were not mandatory and could not be enforced, unlike a mandatory mask order for Ada County handed down last month by Central District Health.
Ada and Canyon counties remain the state's hot spots when it comes to community spread of the coronavirus, though the two health district's overseeing those counties have taken drastically different measures in combating it.