State officials gave their approval Wednesday to the appointment of Erin Mrenak from Acting Director to Director of the Erie County Department of Health.
Mrenak, who spent 12 years in public health work at Stairways Behavioral Health has been working at the health department for the past year, during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. She's excited to make the move. "I'm thrilled for the opportunity to be able to help provide this service to our community," she said.
With a change in masking guidance from the CDC happening recently, we wanted to know if Mrenak thinks schools may be going mask optional too soon, based on the rate of virus spread here. The new county health director said we should remember that Erie County is only in the "moderate" rate of transmission because of how the CDC modified its metrics. "From a public health side, we would still encourage people to wear masks because they are one of the easiest ways we can help...prevent the spread of disease," Director Mrenak said.
The metric shift considers not just a rolling 7 day look at whether cases are fewer than 200 per 100,000 people in a community's population, but also how many people who test positive for COVID-19 are admitted to local hospitals and how many COVID beds those hospitals have available, Mrenak said. "They changed their metrics to try to be more in touch with what's going on in each community, really looking at what's going on with your hospital systems to make sure that's not overburdened so if people do get infected they have good access to care.
"Even if you are starting to take off your masks in Erie County schools or around the community, if you have a Spring break trip planned Mrenak said it's important to know the community transmission level of the virus where you are headed. "New York Times has a great dashboard, CDC has a dashboard where you can look at metrics nationwide to see what COVID looks like in that area."
Although masks are no longer CDC required on school buses, a January 2021 order that requires people to wear masks on trains, planes, other forms of public transportation and in hubs and terminals is still in effect, but Mrenak said new guidance is expected soon. "Those were set to expire on March 18th so the CDC has indicated that they're currently working on their recommendations for that and that will come out before that expires," she said.
Mrenak is excited about the new job and hopes to move Erie County forward if cases stay low. "We're kind of establishing our plans for what COVID recovery looks like in our community, but also being well prepared to pivot back in the event that we have another surge," Mrenak said.