PORT ANGELES – There were no new positive cases of covid-19 to report at this morning’s briefing by County Health Officer Dr. Unthank, but she did have some interesting things to say.

Unthank says she expects to see more people getting sick now that we have moved into Phase 2, not just with covid-19 but with anything.

That said, the County now has enough tests on hand to test everyone with symptoms of any kind, no matter how mild, for covid-19, and she’s encouraging anyone who feels sick to get tested. She pointed out that the county’s most recent positive case had, for the first week of his illness, only muscle aches and fatigue as symptoms.

“If someone calls and says ‘Hey, I think I have covid-19. I have a runny nose’, test them. They might just have a cold but they could have covid-19 and that could infect a lot of people. So really, anyone who’s sick, I actually do want you to go ahead and get tested. I have a really low threshold to get tested.”

Unthank says that while she doesn’t recommend people gathering in large groups, she does respect their right to protest. She says if you’re going to a protest, wear a mask and maintain spacing. As for the risk…

“That risk is lower when you’re outside. It is higher when you’re yelling. So we are…we know that it is possible we might see a rise in infections related to the protest, and how big that’ll be, we don’t know.”

On the subject of masks, the latest directive from Governor Inslee says, starting June 8, workers in Washington will have to wear facial coverings at their jobs, unless they don’t have in-person interactions. Unthank says that while she strongly recommends that people wear masks, she is not in favor of a mandate to wear them.

“There are few reasons we’re not recommending mask mandates, but one of them actually has to do with what’s going on right now. Which is, we do know that these kinds of mandates, when they are put in place in other parts of the country are disproportionately enforced on disenfranchised groups. On people of color, on people who are homeless. And we know that that actually leads to increased interactions with the police that can go badly. And it’s not necessarily even because the police are bad. It’s because we as a community call the police on people of color disproportionately and we call the police on people who are homeless disproportionately. And I don’t want to create a mandate that will cause more friction between our population and the police. And I really respect the police department and the sheriff’s department that have said they don’t want to enforce a mandate like that, that they think it will cause more problems than good.”