Two more cases of COVID-19 were discovered in Jefferson County over the weekend, Public Health Officer Dr. Tom Locke said Monday.

The number of confirmed infections of COVID-19 stood at 67 on Aug. 24 in Jefferson County. That’s an increase of two cases from the 65 reported late last week. (The number of coronavirus infections rose again, to 68, late Monday.)

Though some have raised the possibility of new COVID-19 infections as coming from visitors to the county, Locke said that hasn’t been the case.

“The investigations we’ve done – we’ve not seen tourists as links in any of the cases we’ve see in Jefferson County,” Locke told the board of county commissioners during their weekly coronavirus update Monday.

Instead, the infections have been passed through families, contacts with friends, or trips to other states.

“It’s all these normal things that people do that have suddenly become unsafe in the middle of a pandemic,” Locke said.

“We’re at a very difficult time in the pandemic,” he added.

If a vaccine becomes available in early 2021, Locke said, and it is rapidly deployed, the spread of COVID-19 may start to subside.

“In the most optimistic view, we are at the halfway point,” he said.

Willie Bence, director of the Jefferson County Department of Emergency Management, said Monday that the department’s informal survey of masking compliance in the county is still on hold.

Bence announced last week that the surveying had been halted following a confrontation between a business owner and a part-time worker over the previous weekend had left the merchant “very uncomfortable” during the county worker’s visit to the shop.

Bence said he apologized to the business owner but reminded commissioners that no personal information has been collected during the weekly masking surveys since they started.

The county worker didn’t have identification to show during the dustup, which was further inflamed when an account of the incident was shared on social media.

The surveyor wasn’t trying to spy on people, he said, and the surveying program was being evaluated.

During last week’s update, Bence said that if the mask survey effort continues, the department’s volunteers and employees would be required to wear proper identification.

One way is through the use of identification on lanyards, and Bence noted that hadn’t been the practice in the past due to the worry that people would just adjust their behavior and put on a mask if they could see a survey was underway. 

“We wanted it to be a realistic snapshot,” he explained.

Bence expressed sympathy with businesses and their employees, who have been dealing with “anti-maskers,” he said, and the burden of policing the personal behavior of the people who come into their stores.

Local businesses have also been dealing with “Karens,” he said, the internet term for the privileged class who complain about things they really shouldn’t be complaining about.

In the local COVID arena, it’s those who are blaming businesses for not doing enough, though many are dealing with distressing drops in revenue, and fewer workers and customers, while adopting alternative ways of providing products and services. Add to that the pall of uncertainty that the pandemic has covered everyone under.

During Monday’s COVID-19 update, Bence told commissioners the department is looking to the University of Washington for guidance when it comes to numbers of people wearing masks in the community.

The university is currently assessing ways to gauge the level of masking compliance in communities, Bence noted.