ACLU Calls on Imperial County to release more COVID data

EL CENTRO, Calif. (KYMA,KECY) - Imperial county leaders met again today to talk about the latest efforts to fight coronavirus.

And got an update on contact tracing something that has helped decrease new Coronavirus cases in other parts of the country.

Imperial County’s 7-day positivity rate is currently at 18 percent compared to the 7-day positivity rate in California of 5.7%.

Contract traces might help bring that number down.

The Deputy Director of Imperial County Environmental Health says the state is providing 250 bilingual contact tracers.

currently there are 30 across the valley.

“Our contact investigators we have ten public health staff that are primarily nurses that are conducting contact investigations in addition we have 39 contact investigators that have been assigned by the state,” said Jeff Lamoure, Deputy Director of Imperial County Environmental Health.

Meanwhile, the American civil liberties union and community members called on the board of Supervisors to release more data on the COVID, positive people.

“Latinos represent 48 percent of the known positive cases and 93 deaths in Imperial County,” said Crystal Quezada, Senior community advocate of San Diego ACLU.

There are currently 121 COVID related deaths in the county 112 are Latino.

Quezada says you cannot manage what you do not measure.

“We still do not know the ethnicity of 50 percent of the County’s COVID-19 cases although the Imperial County has released information on their dashboard the county must provide additional County data including gender identity socio-economic status and whether the person is an essential worker broken down by industry.”

The board of supervisors did not say whether or not they were releasing the ACLU's requested information to the public.