County was COVID free until July 12

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, stories are beginning to surface about individuals who have tested positive for the disease when they in fact have no trace of the coronavirus in their bodies. Recently, Heather Hillhouse, the mother of the girl who gave Weston County its first positive COVID-19 test result on May 27, shared on Facebook that her family is one of these cases. 
“It doesn’t sound like something like this could be true, but it happened to us,” Hillhouse said in an interview with the News Letter Journal. “Not just to us but to my parents and brother-in-law. We had to stay home and take two weeks off work.” 
According to Hillhouse, the nightmare began on May 20 when her 5-year-old daughter had to be tested for COVID-19 before a scheduled biopsy in Denver. Naturally, after remaining socially isolated since the beginning of March, the family thought they had nothing to worry about. 
“We went and did the test the day before her scheduled biopsy. The doctor called the next morning and said she tested positive. They then canceled her biopsy,” Hillhouse said. “I thought what is going on? We hadn’t been anywhere.”
Questioning the first test, Hillhouse said, her husband, Richard, took the entire family to get tested within 24 hours of their daughter’s positive test. Both parents and all three
children were tested at Stitches Acute Care in Cheyenne. The family was staying in Cheyenne with family to be closer to
the daughter’s doctors in Colorado. All five test results came back negative. 
Hillhouse said that she was further shocked when the Wyoming Department of Health hastily served the family with isolation papers, threatening prosecution if they disobeyed the orders. The working father, grandparents and aunt and uncle all had to stay home for two weeks in isolation. 
“They even suggested that we put our 5-year-old daughter in a room all by herself for a week,” Hillhouse said. “I thought, are you serious?”
On top of the isolation orders, Hillhouse said, the family was “put through the ringer” by the Department of Health. 
“Where have you been? Who have you been around? How old are those people? Where do they live? They wanted to know everything about these people,”
Hillhouse said. “They tell you that you can’t go anywhere. They even wanted to know the address where we would be in isolation.”
While in isolation, Hillhouse had her daughter tested one more time.
“We were initially told by the health department that if we got two negative tests after that first positive, it would be removed. We went and had her tested again. That test is horrible, she was a trooper,” Hillhouse said. “We hated putting her through that, but it was negative again. My husband called both the Wyoming Department of Health and Weston County Public Health with the results. They both told him that it didn’t matter how many negatives we got, it would not be removed.”
She noted once more that this is not what the family was originally told. 
Since that time, Hillhouse said, both her parents have been tested for both COVID-19 and antibodies because they are considered high risk. All the tests have come back negative, she said. 
“The way they explained it to us, if my daughter had COVID-19 and was around them, then their antibody test would have been positive,” Hillhouse said. “They were both negative.” 
For the time being, Hillhouse’s daughter will remain a positive on the charts for Weston County, although, Rep. Hans Hunt, R-Newcastle, confirmed that he has reached out to the Department of Health after seeing the story on Facebook. 
“I’m trying to get to the bottom of this,” Hunt said. “If it is true, and it sounds like it is, the department is in the wrong and I want accountability. Several family members were quarantined, forced by the state to stay in their home at the risk of prosecution for violating that order. Someone at the state health department must absolutely answer for their failings.”
Only a few short days after the story of Hillhouse’s experience was shared on Facebook, Weston County Public Health confirmed two new active cases of the disease in county residents on July 12. 
“The first case is a case of COVID-19 assigned to the Weston County statistic. This individual lives in Weston County but was out of state when tested. The individual had no contacts to anyone in our county during the exposure period of 14 days,” Lori Bickford, Weston County Public Health Nurse said in an email. “There is no community exposure in the county associated with this case.” 
The second lab-confirmed case is reported to be associated with travel. 
“Public health has investigated all the recent positive cases, and there is no evidence of community transmission at this time,” Bickford said. 
The nurse encourages the public to live life as normal as possible while still following the precautions. She said that no one should live in fear. 
“COVID is out there, and until there is a treatment or vaccine, we are just going to have to deal with it,” Bickford said. “Don’t make yourself sick worrying. Take a deep breath and understand that these positives are going to happen. We can do everything we are told to do, and it will still happen.”