STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Hailey Mayor Martha Burke tried to reassure her community Sunday in the wake of news that two Blaine County women have tested positive for coronavirus.
Burke said measures being taken by the Blaine County School District to close schools were precautionary and should not cause alarm.
She was not the only official urging people not to panic.
Idaho State Police had to quell rumors that Idaho planned to close its borders to Washington and Oregon.
And Gov. Brad Little asked Gem State residents not to hoard food: “There is no shortage of food. And the water supply is clean and safe to drink.”
Little declined to close all schools in the state, as fellow governors in Oregon, Washington and elsewhere have done. But most Treasure Valley schools announced they would close for two weeks beginning today.
There was no new information on Sunday about the two Blaine County women who were revealed to have tested positive on Saturday.
One, in her 50s, experienced mild symptoms and is at home self-isolating. The other—in her 70s—was hospitalized but is recovering.
It is apparent that some valley residents are exercising more caution following the news of the positive tests. In several cases Sunday people could be seen practicing social distancing even while out taking walks.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stressed how important social distancing is on Sunday as he made the round of Sunday morning TV shows. Young people in particular aren’t practicing it because they believe the risk to them is minimal and they don’t realize they can be carries to at-risk populations, he said.
State Epidemiologist Christine Hahn estimates that between 15 percent and 35 percent of Idaho’s population will contract the illness. Given what’s happened so far, about 80 percent of those should have mostly mild symptoms.
The average age of those who have died so far is 80; the mortality rate is 2.6 percent in the United States and 3.6 percent worldwide.