DeKalb reports first COVID-19 death

DeKalb County reported its first COVID-19 related death, which coincides with a nearly two-fold increase in cases since area students returned to class.

Although easy to link the dramatic increase in Coronavirus cases with children physically returning to class for the first time since Gov. Mike Parson mandated a statewide school closure, Clinton County Health Department Administrator Blair Shock said the increase is more nuanced than what it seems and highlighted the efforts Cameron R-1 School District teachers and administrators in their efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 thus far.

“Most of our large increase in cases are outbreak associated. We have had one church-related outbreak and an outbreak involving some residential facilities,” Shock said. “Over the last couple of weeks, the significant increase in cases have been associated with schools since school has begun.  We knew we were going to have cases, but some of the aspects we have not anticipated. The school has done a great job in how to effectively reduce close contact within the school so one infectious student does not infect a huge portion of the school. In that way, the school has been able to carry on for the most part.”

Of the four counties encompassing the Cameron R-1 School District, Clinton County saw the greatest increase in less than a month with cases reaching 161 as of Wednesday - up nearly threefold from 42 reported in late July. DeKalb County now sits at 81 confirmed cases. Daviess County also incurred a nearly three-fold increase, up from 17 in July to 49, and Caldwell has 50 cases - including one reported death in July. Shock said one the health department noticed is the correlation between increased infections and the beginning of the fall sports and other school-sponsored and non-sponsored extracurricular activities.

“The majority of the spread is not from classroom-based activity. It’s sports-based activity,” Shock said. “Whether its school sponsored activity associated with students, who have close contact, or a community league - they are in close contact. Last week, especially towards the end of the week, as a health department we were completely overwhelmed.”

Shock said the issue for the Clinton County Health Department does not involve funding, but the ability to hire and train staff members to safely perform their duties in the field. 

“We have to train them and know they’re competent and know what they’re doing. Last week was a genuine struggle for us,” Shock said. “… If we want to look at a positive, the average age of infected has gone down drastically and with that hospitalization has gone down drastically. We don’t plan on having to shut everything down. We’ve got really good at quickly identifying cases and quarantining the contacts in those cases. That works really well at limiting the spread.”