MOHAVE COUNTY – The politics of the coronavirus pandemic were very evident during a Mohave County Board of supervisors meeting that ran well beyond four hours Tuesday, Sept. 7. Plenty of contentious and circuitous discussion led to adoption of a county resolution urging citizens to be responsible for their own public health choices.
Supervisors also voted to return to the Chairman the authority to squelch civilian speakers who engage in personal attack and insult during board meetings. Action on both items is the byproduct of escalating skepticism, criticism and frustration involving Mohave County COVID-19 involvements, particularly by the Department of Public Health.
Director Denise Burley said she is well aware that some board members and the general public no longer trust the Centers for Disease Control and the Arizona Department of Health Services. “I realize there are some that have lost faith and confidence in those agencies, however there are plenty of citizens who still consider that to be the best source of information,” she said.”
Burley explained that conflicting public protective practice recommendations have occurred because the virus is just 18-months old and that research-led discovery is a work in progress. She repeated that her department and staff are not engaged in setting policy in the “mask and vax” arena.
“All public health does in any instance is make recommendations. That’s all we’ve done. That’s all we will continue to do,” she said. “We don’t require anything and I think it’s important to state again because people seem to have a perception that we require things or that we’re going to. We don’t. We don’t have the authority to do that and we operate within our authority.
Burley also bombarded the board with COVID-19 statistics that show Mohave’s current 16.8 percent positivity rate leads all Arizona counties. She said much of the data shows a greater footprint among younger people.
“The largest percentage of cases in August came from the 11 to 19 age group which contributed 17.1% of the cases, followed by the 30-39 age group at 14%,” she said. “What we’re seeing is our school-age kids are more impacted by this and we certainly want to keep schools open. That’s our priority as well as everyone else’s.”
Burley told board members that 629 new COVID-19 cases were documented among 5–18-year old’s during the month of August, a 149% increase over the 252 cases in July. The county COVID-19 case count as of Tuesday stood at 26,127, with 751 deaths attributed to the virus.
Dave Hawkins