Christian County health director goes behind the daily data to tell covid-19 “stories to pull at your heart strings”
Kayla Bebout
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The front-line fighters against the coronavirus are employees of local health departments, who find their jobs increasingly difficult. People exposed to the virus won’t self-quarantine, or won’t answer the phone if they think the call is from a contact tracer at the health department. And as the pandemic accelerates, health-department employees lose more of their friends and relatives to covid-19. Christian County Health Director Kayla Bebout wrote about the personal and professional aspects of the pandemic on behalf of the department’s 43 employees this week in a letter to news media in Hopkinsville. For the complete letter, in Hoptown Chronicle, click here.
On a personal level, some of our very own staff have lost aunts, grandmothers and friends to covid-19. We have talked with friends who are restless because they are isolated at home, alone, frustrated, and concerned about their finances because they are missing work. We have staff with parents who are recovering cancer patients who are at an especially high risk for contracting a detrimental case of covid-19. One of our staff even sympathized with a friend who just had a baby. When she delivered, she was positive [for the virus] so she was isolated away from her newborn for days. Could you imagine being a new mother unable to hold your baby?
Marketing Specialist Amanda Sweeney lost her aunt in April to covid-19. “She was in her 80s, and in the Owensboro hospital for days by herself because she couldn’t have visitors,” Sweeney said. “My uncle still tells the story of how lonely she sounded on the phone as she told him, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be home,’ and she didn’t come home. She died on Easter Sunday.”