‘WHAT A MESS WE NOW ARE IN!’ Records show MO health official’s worry over AG threat

A day before announcing publicly that her department would halt “all COVID-19 related work” this week, Laclede County health administrator Charla Baker wrote to the county’s emergency management office with her worries.

“WHAT A MESS WE NOW ARE IN!!!!!!” Baker wrote in an email obtained by The Star.

Earlier in the week, the department had received a letter from Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt demanding local health departments halt COVID-19 mitigation orders. As a resuult, Baker’s department decided to stop case investigations, contact-tracing, requiring patients who test positive to isolate themselves at home, and reporting case numbers to the public.

Schmitt is running for U.S. Senate and has made overturning local COVID rules a central goal of his office. He wrote county health departments across the state on Tuesday threatening legal action if they do not comply with a sweeping November ruling by a Cole County judge declaring several state health regulations unconstitutional.

The health department in Laclede County, a 35,000-person county northeast of Springfield, was one of more than half a dozen in rural Missouri that announced this week they would suspend COVID response efforts as a result of the letter.

Baker warned Laclede County health care providers and businesses of the suspension of COVID work on Wednesday, a day ahead of the public announcement. It prompted questions from the manager of the Jordan Valley Community Health Center clinic there, according to emails obtained by The Star through a public records request.

“This means I will need to inform my medical team not to report positives to your office and also not to tell the patient to expect a call from the Health Dept with quarantine instructions?” the clinic manager wrote.

Baker wrote: “We will continue to internally track these cases, but until further direction we will not be doing case investigations or giving quarantine orders/recommendations. You are correct that patients will not be receiving a call from our agency with quarantine information. This situation is very complicated, and could change upon further direction from (the state Department of Health and Senior Services); however that is very unlikely.”

This story was originally published December 10, 2021 at 1:29 PM.