Shelby’s ‘tripwire’ plan being finalized
County expected to use recommendations from the CDC
The Shelby County Health Department is set to announce tripwires that could trigger the closure of bars, restaurants or other facilities if certain Covid-19-related thresholds are hit.
Shelby County Health Department Director Alisa Haushalter said Thursday an announcement detailing those thresholds was expected in the next week or week and a half, three weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited Shelby County and recommended the Memphis and Shelby County COVID-19 joint task force adopt “epidemiologically-based tripwires for issuing pre-decided policy changes,” according to a report from the federal agency.
Haushalter said the health department had discussed the proposed tripwires with Memphis, Shelby County and suburban leaders Thursday morning and that suggestions from those officials would be incorporated into the draft before it was made public. She declined to say what specific actions would be triggered if the tripwires were hit.
“We want to do the best we can to balance the economic impact, the social impact and the health impact of
COVID on our community,” she said.
Haushalter said discussions about the tripwires were not negotiations but the opportunity to get perspective from government and medical leaders and try to come to a consensus.
“Through that discussion, and sometimes its dialogue and sometimes its robust debate, we come to a better end,” she said.
The CDC and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report – written after representatives of the agencies visited the Memphis area in late June and early July – called for swift, decisive action by the task force.
City of Memphis spokesman Dan Springer said the tripwires are still being finalized.
Millington Mayor Terry Jones said the municipal mayors were presented with the draft tripwires Thursday morning, and that the Shelby County Health Department listened to their opinions “because we’re all trying to stay on the same page.”
“We did some discussion this morning and they listened to some input, so we’ll wait for a final draft to come back,” he said. “It looks like probably the way to move forward. … We’d rather not see us move backward depending on things worse, but if it gets bad enough that things have to do that, then we’ll have to do that.”
Haushalter said the discussion Thursday morning centered on “the principles that we all agree to as a broader community” and are necessary to manage the virus locally while reducing the economic impact on Shelby County and getting kids back to school.
“Then as we have to implement interventions, particularly if our case rate goes up or our death rate goes up, how do we do that in a very tailored fashion so that we reduce the impact economically and socially,” she said.
While there was pushback from the municipal mayors on the earlier mask directive from the health department, people later agreed that it was likely the best way to head toward reopening, Jones said.
“We’re going to follow what rules they come up with and just do what we can to abide by it,” Jones said.
James Lewellen, Collierville town administrator, said he believes the framework for the tripwires is in place, but just needs to be tweaked with some qualifiers on the numbers used to trigger going into different phases.
“The intent of this is to try to put out some metrics to say if the cases hit this, if we have situations of reductions or growth then we would trip going into another phase, either adding more restrictions or lessening the restrictions and opening more businesses,” Lewellen said.
Germantown city administrator Patrick Lawton said Wednesday Shelby County Health Department Director Alisa Haushalter had worked with municipal leaders throughout the pandemic to try to address their concerns.
“She does a very good job and she understands the practicality between what has to happen from the health department, but she also understands the economic realities as well,” he said. “At the end of the day, first and foremost, the health aspects are most important to her. But she understands the concerns of the mayors trying to find that balance.”
Masking compliance and campaign
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland also announced a partnership between the city and La Prensa Latina on Thursday to provide resources and educational materials on the virus and about masking for the area’s Spanish-speaking population.
“We’ve seen how this virus disproportionately affects African Americans and our Latinx communities. To help ensure we’re doing everything we can to help slow the spread, we have partnered with La Prensa Latina on a new website and a new ad campaign,” he said.
La Prensa Latina operations manager Jairo Arguijo said the Mascarillas Arriba Memphis campaign would have messages targeted at kids and adults through a variety of mediums, including social media and La Prensa Latina’s weekly.
Information about the campaign can be found at https://mascarasarribamemphis.com/.
The mayor also said that there had been an overall improvement in the number of people wearing masks in public after the Memphis City Council passed a mask mandate, which was followed shortly by a masking requirement by the health department, which applied to the entire county.
Strickland said Memphis code enforcement had processed 324 mask complaints as of Thursday and that 124 warnings and two summonses – which come after three warnings – had been issued.
Haushalter stressed the importance of masking Thursday, saying it was one of the best tools to help prevent the spread of the virus and avoid hitting the tripwires.