Each local health district continues to evaluate its progress in the fight against COVID-19. The Governor’s Office and DHHS have started conversations with local health department districts about moving to Phase 4 Directed Health Measures.
Based on recent data trends, the Loup Basin Health Department jurisdiction is prepared to move to Phase 4 DHMs as of Friday, July 24, 2020. Loup Basin Public Health Department jurisdiction includes: Blaine, Custer, Garfield, Greeley, Howard, Loup, Sherman, Valley, and Wheeler.
“Our main goals have been to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed and keep our community as safe and healthy as possible. We have been aggressively managing COVID-19 and the level of activity in our jurisdiction has been fairly low. The decision to move to stage 4 of the directed health measures was based on logic as well as science. If waiting until there are no cases of Covid-19, it could be a long time. The precautions can’t be worse than the disease itself and there are still a lot of businesses that are being affected by not moving to the next stage. Inconveniencing them until we are 100% certain there is no risk could go on indefinitely. With the low numbers of active cases we have experienced in the past month, it seems it has finally become time to move forward to the final phase of the directed health measures. We believe we can continue to manage this virus and protect the residents of our nine (9) counties by maintaining good social distancing practices, wearing masks when appropriate, along with other preventive measures,” said Chuck Cone, Director.
Information on the guidelines, which are further relaxed in Phase 4 are available at http://dhhs.ne.gov/Pages/COVID-19-Directed-Health-Measures.aspx along with a document that outlines all phases.
