By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a major focus for public bodies in Southwest Michigan as well as the rest of the state and the nation. Government leaders are debating a variety of issues related to the virus including what it means for their budgets and how public health needs fit in with individual rights.
Berrien County Commissioners debated both issues at last week’s Berrien County Board meeting. It was once again held virtually and it looks like commissioners will continue to do so for at least the next month. The county board meets normally on Thursday mornings at 10:30 a.m. and are available for the public to see on the county’s YouTube channel.
The main issue before the county board last week was whether or not to use over $900,000 in federal CARES Act funds to hire more people for the Berrien County Health Department. The new hires would be on the job for up to 30 months and fill a number of roles including communications and contact tracing.
County commissioners ended up approving the new hires and two other COVID related resolutions, although the votes weren’t unanimous. A majority of commissioners voted to enter into an agreement with the Mitre Corporation for free contact tracing software and programs, accept contact tracing funding and hire nine new people in the health department.
A number of commissioners took exception to the practice of contact tracing related to COVID-19 as well as having a third party company have access to data on county residents.
“It is our data, we have access to it,” Berrien County Health Officer Nicki Britten said in answer to a question from Commissioner Ezra Scott. “The company has taken all of the appropriate safeguards to protect our information on their servers. They do not have ability to use our data in any way.”
County Board Chairman Mac Elliott likened the matter to medical record
storage systems. “My analogy is that it’s like medical record storage systems,” he said. “They have fairly robust regulations that make it clear that being the custodians of the records is just that. They have no access or ownership of the data.”
“I’m always leery of giving anyone third party access,” Scott said. “My personal feeling is that I’d rather have the computer software and program owned by the county.”
Scott and Commissioner Jon Hinkelman voted no on all three resolutions and were joined by Commissioner Teri Freehling in
the no vote for the Mitre Corporation software contract and the hiring of the nine new people. Commissioner Don Meeks also voted no on the hiring resolution.
Scott noted that most of the $940,556 the health department is getting will go for the contact tracing effort and not directly for fighting COVID-19. “I’m not in favor contact tracing at all, I wonder what rabbit hole we’re going to go down with this effort,” he said.
Britten said surveillance and contact tracing are integral parts of the public health efforts when it comes to tracking disease in the community. “Unfortunately that’s the term and it has negative connotations,” she said. “The surveillance system sets up the way diseases are reported. Certain infectious diseases have to be reported any time they’re diagnosed.”
“This is pretty routine stuff, we’ve been doing it for over 50 years in the public health field,” she added. “Contact tracing is part of infectious disease investigation and how we protect the pubic by reaching out to those who might have been exposed. If we have reason to believe someone might have been exposed, we ask them about their health. We do respect people’s confidentiality.”
“I believe that a majority of residents would want to know if they’ve been exposed so they can monitor their own symptoms and not spread the illness,” she said. “We are also required by state law to do these activities, but we do not divulge private information.”
Britten acknowledged that people with COVID could give names of people they don’t like when asked about who they’ve been in contact with and that those names could stay in a database. “We don’t give names only locations in our reports,” she said. “There’s not really a process to remove that person but we could put in our notes that the person was actually not in contact.”
Scott also questioned what role enforcement has in the contact tracing effort. “The thing that’s concerning to me is enforcement and we really haven’t even discussed that,” he said. “What about enforcement of contact tracing? What if people say no we haven’t been in contact, what’s the health department’s job in enforcement?”
Britten noted that while Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders have
enforcement elements, her department is most concerned about compliance when it comes to restaurants and large gatherings. “We haven’t ever had a situation ever where we had to enforce the health code, it would have to be an extreme situation,” she said.
As for the new hires, the primary concern of those voting no was what it will mean to the county’s budget in a time when revenue is down due to the shutdown. Scott said he knew he was “beating a dead horse” but said he was concerned that five of the nine new positions will be union positions.
He also took exception to adding positions in a time of belt tightening. “We should be tightening our belts with revenue cuts expected from the state and now we are growing,” he said. “How can we tell other departments that the health department gets to go up while others go down. I see this as a snowball starting to roll down the hill.”
Elliott said he believes the new fulltime positions are needed to help out current health department employees who have been working hard the last few months and may be on the verge of burnout. He noted that he doesn’t expect a problem with eliminating the positions when the funding runs out.
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