YULEE, Fla. — Officials in Nassau County are assuring that response has been prompt to the first confirmed case of COVID-19, known as coronavirus, on the First Coast. A 68-year-old man in the county tested positive Tuesday night.
“There was very rapid self-isolation, reporting, testing and now notification,” Nassau County Public Health Officer Dr. Eugenia Ngo-Seidel told the county commission at a meeting Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting, open to the public, was held at the county emergency operations center only because an early voting event was already underway at the commission chambers.
“We do know that he’s isolated somewhere in Nassau County,” emergency operations director Gregory Foster – also a Nassau County Sheriff’s officer – told First Coast News.
The officials also confirmed that the local case was related to recent travel, but declined to answer further questions, including specifically, the man had visited.
“It is important to balance the privacy of individuals with the responsibility to disclose information that will really help to protect the public,” Ngo-Seidel admonished, answering several specific questions about the afflicted man with “That’s private and protected health information.”
But she assured that proper follow-up steps had been taken.
“We have already reached the identified contacts in the community and provided instruction on quarantine and isolation and monitoring,” she told commissioners.
Foster spoke of ongoing efforts among various personnel and agencies, efforts that began well before the local case was confirmed.
“We are staying in and have been in contact with the Florida Department of Health in Nassau,” Foster clarified, “and listened in to conference calls with the Florida Department of Health, Tallahassee, repeatedly for the last two-plus weeks.”
He also said the County is preparing in the event of potential workforce depletion, “dealing with how we would set up to support and back up the hospitals or the Department of Health with people that aren’t infected by it.”
But Foster emphasized that officials are nowhere near panicking, and urged that individual citizens remain calm.
“In the disciplines around the county, there’s not an environment of panic at this point," he said. "We’re just monitoring, making sure that we stay abreast of everything that’s going on.”