Antonio Delgado is an environmental health specialist for Clark County Public Health who normally works with septic systems. But these have not been normal times.
Since mid-January, Delgado has also been part of the county’s measles outbreak response. That means he’s been forced to triage his septic system workload — with repairs for damaged systems still near the top of the list.
“It’s sewage going places it’s not supposed to go,” Delgado said.
Closer to the bottom of the list is reviewing construction of new septic systems, which can hold up construction on new houses.
“The wait time on those has suffered,” Delgado said. “Those are frustrating people, because the building process for a new home is already pretty long. The county is growing rapidly, so there’s a lot of construction going on. And you know, people are always on a deadline. So it’s been a challenge to keep up with that while working on the measles for half the time, basically.”
Clark County’s measles outbreak has recorded 70 confirmed cases as of Monday, and cost more than $500,000 to fight. But one impact that’s harder to measure is what happens when Public Health employees put their regular job on the back burner to help fight the outbreak.
“You’ve got to pick your battles,” said Sean Hawes, another environmental health specialist who works with septic systems.
Marissa Armstrong, Clark County Public Health’s public information officer, said work isn’t being eliminated, but some things have to be delayed until the outbreak begins to subside.
“Our programs have had to look at all the work and prioritize what needs to be done, because obviously they can’t do everything,” she said.
Alyssa Payne and other environmental health specialists have focused on plan reviews and nonroutine inspections during the outbreak, but routine inspections aren’t getting done as often. Payne usually does about 10 routine inspections a week but recently did five in just one day to try to keep up with demand.
From Jan. 1 to Feb. 20, 2018, Public Health conducted 261 routine food inspections. In that same time period this year, Public Health conducted only 122 routine food inspections.
“Every inspection I’ve had they’ve been like, ‘We’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?’ ” Payne said with a smile. “I’ve been like, ‘Oh, you missed me? I can come more often. I can hang out.’ ”
New responsibilities
Clark County Public Health has contacted more than 3,700 people for an initial interview regarding possible measles exposure, since the outbreak, and much of the investigation outreach work has been conducted by employees who have shifted roles like Payne.
Those employees have been trained for their outbreak duties, but there still is a learning curve.
“Have you ever built a car going down the freeway at 60 miles an hour?” Payne asked. “That’s what that was for the first couple days.”
Delgado likes to joke that he couldn’t even spell the word “measles” when the outbreak began, and that the on-loading process was “a little like drinking from a fire hose.” The communicable disease team is used to outbreak response, so they had to implement some routines for the new staff that they wouldn’t normally need themselves, Armstrong said.
Payne explained that shifted staff asked for a daily workflow plan. There was also a script created for outbreak outreach phone calls, but even that can only help you so much once someone answers your call.
“Environmental Health, we’re great people,” Payne said with a laugh. “We’re made for this. We’re great communicators. We’re great at problem-solving because we do it in the field for our regular job. I’m not afraid to call somebody and talking on the phone with them, but I’m uncomfortable having to call somebody and ask, ‘So what’s your vaccination status? What’s your birthday? What’s your address? I promise I’m with the health department.’ ”
Hawes recently worked 14 days in a row, which is an amount other Public Health employees have also clocked during the outbreak. It has been a learning experience, but Hawes said he’s ready for a return to normalcy.
“Working on the measles has been a fantastic opportunity,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about the incident command structure from the logistics side. A whole bunch of acronyms I never knew existed. I’ve been excited to be part of this role, and to be helpful to our community, but I’m ready to go back my normal job.”
