CLAY COUNTY, Fla. – Clay County continues to drive home the point about social distancing and is following every protocol to try and reduce the number of cases of positive COVID-19 cases in long-term care facilities.

The Florida Department of Health reported that Clay has 16 positive tests for COVID-19 at long-term facilities in the county, a number that ranks 10th in the state.

Heather Huffman, administrator for the Florida Department of Health in Clay County, said that the process for working on that continues to be a priority.

“We continue to work with, AHCA the Agency for Healthcare Administration, they're the agency that license and inspects those facilities we continue to work with them and do blank assessments if we have any staff or residents that become positive out of those facilities,” Huffman said. “We look at their infection control practices, how they’re donning and doffing PPE, how they're screening and assessing their staff coming into the facility, and then also just doing those contact tracings with those individuals within the facilities that become positive.

Among other items of merit emerging from Thursday’s press conference:

• Clay County will cut its COVID-19 press conference meetings to once per week, beginning next Wednesday. It had been holding two. If there should be any reason to add to that, the county would adjust accordingly, said John Ward, director of Emergency Management for Clay County.

• Ward mentioned that social distancing has continued to help the county see gains in combating the community spread, but warned that it’s no reason to stop.

“The modeling as we've talked about, we've talked about flattening the curve. Clay County citizens, what you guys are doing are helping. We are flattening the curve. The unfortunate thing, and this is by flattening the curve, it's making it last longer. We're still going to have the same amount of cases but what we're not doing is we're not overwhelming our healthcare systems our hospitals our ventilators those type things. So it's enabled us to manage what we've got in theater within the county.”

• Food banks have been busy in Clay County, jumping to more than 17,000 meals distributed.

“Our food banks last week fed 8,980 people. The school’s fed 6,567 meals. The senior meals from the senior centers fed 1,548, for a total of 17,095 individual meals that were handed out to citizens within our community. And I want to say that we’re seeing this continually rise on a weekly basis and we’re prepared to support it. … There should not be a citizen in Clay County that does not have food or does not have the support they have.”