CHENANGO COUNTY – The Chenango County Department of Public Health is encouraging individuals and families to continue social distancing and self quarantine as numbers of confirmed cases of coronavirus continues to climb.

Director of the CCDOH, Marcas Flindt said, “We've been doing the social distancing and staying at home for a number of weeks now. I know people are getting tired of that. Our communities are getting tired of the social distancing. But it's really important at this juncture to continue these practices because here in Chenango County our confirmed lab cases are still going up. The number that we have in quarantine continues to go up. So we're going to have to continue to do the social distancing and staying home for another couple of weeks.”

The CCDOH has put a strong focus on quarantining families and individuals who have been in contact with people who have tested positive. Flindt said this is a proven technique to avoid a spike of patients being admitted into the hospital.

“It will hopefully have the effect of stringing out that peek so that the hospital will be able to handle the patients that do come in over a period of time, and not all at once,” said Filndt.

Bassett Network Chief Medical Information Officer Dr. Scott Cohen explains how social distancing is the best practice for staying healthy.

“The reality is the one thing that is going to protect us all and decrease the community based transmission, including by people who don't even realize they're sick, is spacing of people at least six feet apart, not gathering in groups, and following the guidelines that are out there. There is some evidence already that it may be slowing the curve,” said Cohen.

Lately, there has been a demand from the public to obtain access to information about where people with positive cases live and where they've visited. Cohen addresses this by advising people to act as if everyone they come across is positive.

“I know you want to know which of your neighbors is positive or which facilities have positive cases. One of the reasons we don't supply that information is because we're really not allowed to down to a granular level because of privacy concerns. But there are other reasons as well. When you ask someone, 'You want to know if your neighbor is positive or negative, if you found out they were positive, would that change your behavior?' The factor is if you would actually change your behaviors knowing that your neighbor's positive, then you weren't doing enough to begin with. The reality is you should be modifying your behaviors assuming everyone is positive,” said Cohen.

According to Cohen, the CDC is advising individuals to consider wearing a cloth mask when going out in public.

“You may touch your face less because there is a mask covering it, and large droplets in the air are filtered out,” said Cohen.

With the recent sunny weather, CCDOH Director of Environmental Health Isaiah Sutton, is advising the public to resist the urge to congregate outside.

“As the weather gets nice, we have seen an influx of complaints regarding non-essential activities going on in the public. We can't urge businesses and individuals enough to maintain social distancing. If you are not an essential worker, or don't have an essential worker exemption from the governors office we really expect that you dispel those activities,” said Sutton.

Flindt thanked the public for continued forbearance, “I really want to thank people for their patience. Staying home and social distancing are both proven public health evidence based practices that really work, so please keep doing them. We really need it right now.”