TORRINGTON ñ Needless to say, the staff of Goshen County Public Health (GCPH) have stayed astronomically busy, while overcoming substantial challenges over the last several years.

With the infamous world battle with COVID-19 no longer a public health emergency, GCPH staff are relieved, and eager for what lies ahead.

In recent times when we think of GCPH, we of immediately think of the pandemic. Thankfully, the time has come to remember that although the office still works with it, we cannot forget the numerous other services GCPH has, and is eager to offer. These services remain vital to ensuring the health and wellbeing of Goshen residents of all ages.

According to Public Health Response Coordinator, Ryan Wunibald, the excitement in moving ahead and returning to a relieving sense of normalcy, particularly for staff, has been terrific.

“I felt we had a reduction in clients because of not being able to be as visible to them,” Wunibald began. “I think for our staff, just to see the opportunity to be excited about other parts of the job that they get to do now, mainly allows us more time to get back to other programs.”

It should be noted that GCPH offers a wide variety of services related to important public health matters. These services include cancer screenings, pregnancy tests, STD/HIV testing, children’s special health, pregnant and parenting families, and tuberculosis testing.

One particular service GCPH offers is known as the LT101 program. This particular service involves a long term care assessment, where a potential or current client’s home can be visited and evaluated. If the client qualifies for nursing home level of care, this can make them eligible for an available program where a client can stay in their home and receive services such as delivered meals, help with bathing or housekeeping.

Nurse Manager, Kelly Beard, also expressed relief and a sense of optimism with returning to other aspects of GCPH, post-Covid.

“I think it’s great to be focusing on things that we used to be able to do,” Beard said. “We were pretty engulfed in the pandemic, plus we couldn’t go into client’s houses for a while, so we had to do a lot by Zoom. So just getting back to what we use to do allows us time to focus on other programs and do home visits.”

With summer already in July, a minor seasonal source of concern recently and in the past of course has been West Nile Virus (WNV). 

Miraculously there has only been one recorded case of WNV, and was documented surprisingly in a month that Goshen County would least expect.

“So far Goshen is the only county that’s had a positive WNV case, and that was in March,” Wunibald laughed. “According to our State Epidemiologist, Courtney Tillman, it must have been a wintered mosquito. Right now it’s still too early to tell what kind of mosquito season it’s going to be. Obviously we’ve had a lot of rainfall this year, and we encourage residents to practice the Five D’s of WNV prevention.”

The Five D’s of WNV prevention, according to the Wyoming Department of Health, include first and secondly, dawn and dusk. Culex mosquitos, who are known to be the primary carriers of the virus, are far more likely to be active during the dawn and dusk hours of the day. 

The third D would include dress. Residents would be wise to wear shoes, socks, long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt when outdoors for extended periods of time, or when mosquitoes are known to be most active. Clothing in general should be a light color made of a tight woven material to prevent mosquitoes from penetrating the skin.

Fourthly would be drain. Goshen residents would be encouraged to reduce the amount of standing water on or near their property by draining or removing the water. This is due to mosquitoes choosing to lay eggs in areas with standing water.

“With all of the rain, this tends to disrupt standing water which are breeding grounds,” Beard said. “The standing water isn’t good, but the rain certainly helps. The Culex mosquitoes are the only mosquitoes that carry it in Wyoming , and they are usually out  during dawn and dusk.”

The final D would be a mosquito repellent known as DEET, otherwise known as picaridin. Other reliable insect repellent include the use of lemon oil and eucalyptus, which are registered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Although WNV is something that many residents are familiar with, according to GCPH, it never hurts to take something potentially harmful seriously for the sake of safety.

“Part of public health is preparing for emergencies, and we’ve learned from everything we’ve dealt with both for us, and the whole world,” Beard said. “So other lessons have definitely been learned, and we are always taking classes and doing exercises for different scenarios. We are definitely involved, but it takes more than seven of us. We have a staff of seven, and we work with the whole county.”

Both Wunibald and Beard noted that one of the biggest aspects of support has come from the community, as well as other Goshen partnerships GCPH works with regularly. With this they would like them to stay engaged moving forward when it comes to public health matters.

“We had so much extra help with Covid, which was awesome,” Wunibald said. “So we’re hoping we can take those really excellent volunteers for us and outsource that, and hopefully even increase those numbers. That’s one focus that we’re going to try to do in the very near future. We need to try again to encourage more people to come to the table when we are doing emergency planning. We need a lot of input on that, because we know that a lot of people in Wyoming will help when we have an emergency.”

Beard noted further, “No one can be an island by themselves. Within our community, everyone worked well with Covid. We will continue working with our partners throughout the community, school districts, police department and sheriff’s office. We have a great group to work together. Another positive is just our partnership with the state. If we need more help, we can call the state and have the accessibility with different expertise and dedication. We couldn’t have had a better staff, and working relationships.”

For further information regarding GCPH, feel free to call 307-532-4069, or visit www.goshencounty.org.