COVID chief wants more vigilance

If there is one thing Greg Gould could get across to his fellow Montanans, it is this: “We need to stay vigilant for the long term as the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, continues to spread.”

“Stay the course,” Gould said. “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Gould recommends people continue to follow distancing, hand-washing, cleaning and mask-wearing guidelines to prevent or slow the virus spread.

Unified Command and Lake County Public Health report that the total Lake County COVID-19 cases rose to 22 as of Tuesday, July 7, with seven cases currently active.

In addition, five individuals from out-of-state have tested positive in Lake County (two active at this time).

As with any communicable disease, these cases are counted in their home jurisdiction, not in the Lake County case count. 2,100 COVID-19 tests have been run in Lake County clinics/hospitals. 1,995 have been negative and 80 are currently pending.

Gould has the experience to know what he’s talking about. This is his fifth pandemic.

Gould is the Operations Chief for Lake County Unified Command for the COVID-19 pandemic. He began his emergency services career as a paramedic firefighter.

Gould was working for the Hualapai Tribe in Arizona when the hantavirus outbreak occurred in 1993 in the Four-Corners region, hitting the Navajo people especially hard.

A large federal response brought him and many others to help.

From there, his career “kind of morphed over time,” he says.

He took on training in hazardous materials, then toxicology. After 30 years in the emergency management field, he has worked on public health preparedness and emergencies for federal, state, and tribal entities throughout the country.

Five years ago, Gould founded the Emergency Management certificate program with a concentration in Tribal Public Health Preparedness at Salish Kootenai College.

This is the only tribal college in the nation with such a program. His students happened to be studying quarantine as a tool for slowing a pandemic when COVID-19 hit Montana.

He is currently working to rewrite the training course on tribal public health preparedness for the federal Emergency Management Institute.

When the pandemic struck, it became quickly apparent to both tribal and county government in Lake County that it would be advantageous for everyone to work together to manage the response.

To those experienced in emergency management, including wildfires, floods, and other disasters, the situation called for implementing the Incident Command System (ICS), used throughout the nation and the world to quickly organize resources and expertise to meet the needs of the moment.

Using the ICS framework, CSKT and Lake County governments signed a joint Memorandum of Understanding and created a policy guidance document setting up the Unified Command Center (UCC) (available at www.icc-jic.com).

They identified ICS structure and staffing from county, tribal, college, and the health care fields.

“Everybody got put where their skill set was,” Gould says. “It was a very quick start. The organization chart was “solidified in just a couple short meetings.”

“Tribal forestry does the logistics of ‘moving stuff’ all day every day, so they were the natural choice for the logistics section,” he said.

Gould was designated Chief of Operations, which primarily includes the public health sector for both the tribe and the county.

Each entity already has its own effective systems for handling their job, be it health care, communications, funding, transportation, and so on.

“The goal is not to change how they do business,” Gould says. “The goal is to take how each of them work and integrate them together for purposes of the Unified Command.”

This way, as one entity learns something, it can be quickly shared through the group for a more “wholistic” picture of a given situation.

The organization is working well together, Gould says.

“It was the right structure at the right time with the right people.”

They at first met (through conference calls) every five days to work out details as the pandemic situation rapidly unfolded, but as things slowed down they were able to extend the period to every two weeks.

As of the end of June, Montana’s aggressive, cooperative efforts to manage the virus outbreak has made the state the lowest in overall number of cases and lowest cases per capita in the nation.

The UCC recently coordinated the testing of 2,486 residents at four stations throughout the county as part of the statewide push to test 60,000 people per month to help keep the COVID virus in check.

“We’re not seeing people testing out of a sense of fear,” Gould said. “We’re seeing a lot of people that understand the importance of it and want to do their part to protect themselves, protect their family, and protect the community.”

That testing event resulted in some good news for Lake County and CSKT: of all results returned so far, none have tested positive for the virus.

With the reopening of businesses and removal of quarantine requirements, however, “Things [infection numbers] are trending up statewide,” he says. “Not good.”

Surrounding counties Missoula, Ravalli, and Flathead are seeing “dramatic” increases, Gould said.

Because of the incubation period, “Every number we see reflects activity from two weeks ago,” Gould said.

He says that statewide, the main source of infections is related to travel and gatherings such as family reunions that bring in people from out of area that then mingle closely with Montana residents.

“We knew travel and travel related activities were our main threat. No two ways about it.”

CSKT has extended their “Shelter In Place” order, while Lake County continues to follow the governor’s Phase 2 restrictions and recommendations.