Updated 10:23 p.m. May 5 to include names of other counties included in North Country re-opening region.

BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

CANTON -- St. Lawrence County’s public health director said there is a plan in the works to re-open the local economy in coordination with six neighboring counties: Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis, Hamilton, Clinton and Essex.

Dana McGuire, who leads the SLC Public Health Department, told the Board of Legislators on Monday, May 4 that the plan is in the very early stages. She spoke during the board’s monthly meeting streamed online via Zoom.

Dr. Andrew Williams, president of the SLC Board of Health, said the number of new cases here are going down, but that has to be throughout the entire North Country region. And there are several other criteria that must be met in order to start the phased reopening.

“While we have some of the sameness, there’s a lot of differences we see in our region,” McGuire said.

Dr. Williams cautioned that any plan to reopen has to be deliberate and well planned, because the consequences of a second wave of coronavirus cases could be devastating.

“I’d rather be thoughtful about it, have everything in place … not create some sort of environment where we have to do something even more drastic than what we just did,” he said.

If life during reopening seems like Easy Street, there may always be danger at the door until certain advances are made, the doctor said.

“Until there’s a vaccine and effective treatment, the focus needs to be on prevention, detection and containment,” he said.

Criteria for reopening a region’s economy include a decline in new COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The healthcare systems must also have the capacity at all times to handle a surge in cases, and each county must be able to test 30 out of every 1,000 residents per month. That means about 3,000 tests per month in St. Lawrence County. Lastly, each county must have 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents who will be tasked with tracking down people who each new case have had contact with. McGuire said SLC will have 35 within a week or two.

Dr. Williams said St. Lawrence County is now testing about that number of people, and it will be even easier once outpatient clinics can do the tests.

“Right now we have these testing centers where you need to have an appointment and so on,” he said.

Once those criteria are met, there are four phases each region can go through. The first phase can reopen construction, manufacturing and some retailers that have curbside pickup. The second phase would be professional services, like finance or insurance, and real estate. The third phase would be restaurants and hotels, and the last phase is arts, entertainment, recreation and education.

McGuire said that the county’s summer tourism draws, like fishing tournaments, could be in jeopardy.

“We’re really supposed to avoid all the things that are like an attraction and would gain a lot of people to come here, to the area,” she said.

“On a county level, we need to take into consideration there are areas where there are high transmission levels of this illness,” Dr. Williams said.

Legislator Larry Denesha, R-Gouverneur, said he’s worried that people may not get a coronavirus vaccine when one is made.

Dr. Williams said it may be a challenge to convince a big enough percentage of the population to get vaccinated, when the time comes.

“Because it’s novel coronavirus and there’s lots of information currently available, I think there will be a greater buy-in from the greater pop,” he said. “It will be a challenge … Sometimes somebody has to take a little bit of risk upon themselves to protect their neighbors and protect the vulnerable in our community.”

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