Cape County health board asked to lift COVID-19 recommendations

Editor’s note: This story has been revised from a previous version to clarify a factual error given in a quote.

On Tuesday, public commenters once again pleaded with members of the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center Board of Trustees to resolve the board's COVID-19 recommendations.

One speaker at the board's January meeting equated the board of trustees to Nazis and said "one day" board members "will be held accountable."

Board chairman John Freeze emphasized Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center has no public health mandates. Recommendations on the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center's website align with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Freeze also reminded attendees the health department has not advised schools or Southeast Missouri State University on any health matters since October.

"If you have a complaint about mask mandates in public schools or anything like that, you're wasting your time complaining to us," Freeze said.

The chairman's reminder sparked comments from the crowd.

One attendee, Rita LaVanchy, a frequent speaker at health board meetings, claimed she read emails from local school officials in which the officials said schools received guidance from the health board.

LaVanchy would not disclose who the emails were from. All health board members who responded to LaVanchy said they had no knowledge of such emails.

After the public comment portion of the meeting, board secretary Eric Becking said he'd like to make a motion "to get rid of masks." Becking's comment was met with applause by several audience members.

The motion was not voted on, with some health board members questioning what the motion meant and whether the board had the authority to "get rid of masks."

Reporting of COVID-19 deaths

Freeze addressed concerns raised from a recent article published by the Missouri Independent called "Unaccounted: Inaccurate death certificates across the country hide the true toll of COVID-19."

The article cited "Documenting COVID-19," an investigation from the USA Today Network. The investigation identified Cape Girardeau as one of the top 10 U.S. counties with the greatest spike in deaths not attributed to COVID-19.

The Cape Girardeau County coroner did not pronounce a single person dead of COVID-19 in 2021, the article published Dec. 22 wrote.

Missouri Independent journalists quoted Cape Girardeau County Coroner Wavis Jordan saying his office "doesn't do COVID deaths."

Freeze said he'd like to remind attendees the county coroner is elected by voters and the health department has no supervision over him.

"As far as how COVID deaths are handled, even if the coroner doesn't put it [COVID-19] on the death certificate after someone in the county dies, a representative of the state health department forwards those to the CDC," Freeze said. "The CDC then makes the determination that that person died of COVID."

This statement was not entirely accurate.

On Wednesday, Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center assistant director Autumn Grim clarified.

“The coroner lists the cause of death if there’s not an attending physician to do that,” Grim said. “Then, based on that cause of death, the state sends that information to the CDC and they look at the medical record and cause of death. They make an evaluation on whether or not it counts in the state’s data as a COVID death.”

The CDC’s website provides some details on how causes of deaths appear on death certificates. According to the agency, when a person dies, the cause of death is determined by a physician, medical examiner or coroner who then reports the cause on a death certificate.

States register all death certificates and send them to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Death certificates are then used to produce the nation’s official death statistics.

Jasmine Reed, a public affairs specialist with the CDC, elaborated Thursday.

"The CDC’s NCHS does not change death certificates," Reed said. "If COVID is not on the certificate, we don’t count it in the death certificate data. The result of the linkage might change what the health department sends to the case surveillance, but this would not affect the NCHS count."

COVID-19 updates

Cape Girardeau County Health will now include county COVID-19 data on its website, www.capecountyhealth.com. Data will be uploaded every Thursday.

Health center officials announced in December they would cease weekly COVID-19 updates to shift the health center's focus back to routine public health functions. They then referred people to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) COVID-19 dashboard.

At Tuesday's meeting, Board of Trustees vice chairwoman Georganne Syler said several people told her the DHSS website is slow and hard to get to.

The latest COVID-19 data up to Jan. 23 is now on the health center's website.

DHSS lists county-by-county coronavirus data every day here.

The Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center Board will have its next meeting at noon Feb. 22 at the Shawnee Park Center.