Dr. Scott Cohen from Bassett Health Care disucsses what degrees of quarantine the county is using based on exposure and symptoms, as well as how social distancing is one of the best forms of protection from the virus.

CHENANGO – Yesterday the Chenango County Department of Public Health held a press conference discussing updates for COVID-19 in Chenango County.

As of yesterday, there are 4 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Chenango County. There are 49 individuals in mandatory quarantine and 63 in precautionary quarantine.

According to Dr. Scott Cohen of Bassett Healthcare, precautionary quarantine is for someone who has had a known exposure but is not showing symptoms of the virus. A mandatory quarantine is for someone with a known exposure and is showing symptoms.

Cohen states that people are able to come out of mandatory quarantine only after they have gone 72 hours without a fever, virus symptoms have significantly improved, and seven days after their symptoms first appeared.

“If all of those three criteria are met we know that the likelihood of you shedding the virus and giving it to someone else are very low,” said Cohen.

Cohen strongly encouraged healthy individuals to follow the social distancing guidelines to protect themselves from the virus.

“Listen to the governor’s words regarding regarding trying to keep yourself distanced. This social distancing is not a farce, it is really extremely important and extremely helpful is decreasing the risk of exposing yourself and others. We know that if you are six feet from the nearest person the likelihood of you being infected by them or them being infected by you is pretty low. This is not political posturing, this is real,” said Cohen. “We're not able to test as many people as we like because there is not enough testing media out there. We have strict guidelines for who we are testing right now.”