By Jeri Davis and Bob Conrad
Gov. Steve Sisolak today released initial guidance detailing how authority over COVID-19 mitigation efforts will be transitioned to counties starting on May 1.
The governor’s COVID-19 Mitigation and Management Task Force will work with counties between now and May 1 to develop and approve a plan for each to manage their own virus mitigation strategies.
Each county needs to start working on the development of their own mitigation and enforcement plans to prepare to take authority. Monitoring efforts, mitigation measures, enforcement measures, public information campaigns and the resources and people needed to manage them will need to be laid out in each plan.
On March 15, the State Task Force will start conducting an in-progress review of each county’s plan and provide feedback and recommendations during public meetings. By mid-April these plans will be finished.
Plans must receive an endorsement from the local health district, the superintendent for the local school district, the city manager (for counties with cities with a population greater than 100,000) and the Nevada Hospital Association. After a plan gets these endorsements, it will need to be approved by a vote of the board of county commissioners.
“The best part of this plan is that every Nevadan and every Nevada community has a part to play.”
Between April 13 and April 15, the State Task Force will conduct a final review and provide feedback during another series of public meetings. Finally, if all goes well, a county will receive authority to take over its mitigation efforts on May 1.
The transitioning of authority to counties is being done in such a way to ensure the state still receives federal COVID-19 funding resources. The state will continue to manage the arrival of vaccine allotments from the federal government and distribution of vaccine to counties, too.
Early next week, the Task Force is expected to release planning templates and resource guides that county governments will use during their planning processes.
“As a former long-time local elected official, I know how unique local communities are and how much faith is placed in local leadership,” Sisolak said in a statement. “The best part of this plan is that every Nevadan and every Nevada community has a part to play. For the transition to local control to succeed, we must work together now to continue to reduce our community transmission and have a plan to keep Nevadans safe throughout the rest of this emergency period.”
More information on the Task Force meetings, including upcoming meetings and agendas can be found here.
County still short vaccines with more anticipated
Nearly 10% of Washoe County has been vaccinated but vaccines are still in short supply. Jim English with the Washoe County Health District said, however, that percentage will be rising quickly.
Supply chain and logistics businesses are encouraged to sign up for their employees to get vaccinated (signup form near the bottom of the page) — when those vaccinations will occur, however, remains uncertain.
“[The] logistics of transferring a vaccine is really difficult,” English said. “Every … business that signs up should be getting an automatic generated email back.
“I think you’ll see in the coming weeks, a lot of invites go out. We hope to be reaching out to most of the warehouse industry over the next week or so. Furthermore, we are finding a lot more agricultural businesses are in this community than we were originally told,” English added.
English said once businesses are invited to participate, they should expect to have employees vaccinated within about a week.”Over the next few days, you’re going to see our percentage of fully vaccinated people increase dramatically,” he predicted.
