PIERRE, S.D. (KELO.com) — You may have wondered about the vagueness of the reports issued by the Department of Health regarding who has the coronavirus.
Here’s what we learn from the stats about who contracts COVID-19: county, gender, and a decade-long indicator of their age range.
But we don’t learn what county, city or town the latest 60-something male or female victim is from, for example.
Some people would say that’s a good thing.
Someone we know of in the tri-state area took to social media to share about how they had the coronavirus and thought they were going to die.
And this person was verbally attacked by others who were living in fear of contracting the virus from this person.
South Dakota Secretary of Health Kim Malsan-Rysdon says “We do robust and complete investigations with each positive case.
That allows us to identify potential close contacts and work with those people to take appropriate precautions; monitor symptoms; get tested, if needed.
If there is a situation where an individual came into close contact with members of the public that can’t be identified, then we would release information about that potential exposure.
That could be related to an employer, it could be related to a public event; we’ve seen this happen in other states where a person’s been at a basketball game and couldn’t possibly know all of the potential close contacts.
So that’s the process and we will continue to use that.”
