On January 19, 2020 the District was alerted to the first laboratory confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. As of November 18, the District has seen 11,934 confirmed and another 1,324 probable COVID cases in Snohomish County. Unfortunately, 263 Snohomish County residents have died as a result of COVID-19.
In the 10 months following the County’s first case, District response activities have grown in scale and complexity to meet community disease control needs. Securing funding for disease control activities has and continues to be a critical component of District operations. The most significant source of funding has come through the CARES Act, with the largest portion $10.9 million through an interlocal agreement (ILA) with Snohomish County. These funds have been used to hire over 100 additional temporary workers (e.g., doctors, nurses, disease investigators, test site coordinators) to perform various disease control activities. Some of those activities include:
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Surveillance and epidemiology
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Community-based testing
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Case Investigation and contact tracing
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Outreach investigation and control teams
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Vaccine implementation planning
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Communications
CARES Act funding currently expires December 31, 2020. A loss of continued funding for these disease control efforts would have significant impact on the District’s ability to continue operations at the current scale. Staff is recommending that the Administrative Officer be given authorization by Res. 20-29 (Exhibit A) to use unreserved general funds up to the amount of $2,000,000 for COVID-19-related expenditures beginning January 1, 2021, if no other funding sources become available first.