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There are several new confirmed active cases of COVID-19 this week, according to Lincoln County Health Department Director Diane Miller.

“We had six new cases reported yesterday,” Miller said Tuesday.

Those cases include the following individuals: 71-year-old female; 15-year-old female; 34-year-old female; 11-year-old female; 48-year-old female; and a 23-year-old male.

Prior to those six cases, four cases were confirmed last week, including two employees at Stanford Care and Rehab, one 49-year-old female and one 19-year-old female. The health department reported two other positive cases including a 61-year-old female and 69-year-old female.

Miller said of the six new cases, four of the individuals were asymptomatic and two were symptomatic.

“We’re going to see a lot of that where individuals are not having symptoms and showing positive,” she said.

Cases are monitored by the LCHD on a daily basis, Miller said, and all of the individuals who tested positive are self-quaranting at home.

“We monitor those by calling each day, just checking in with them about their signs and symptoms, conditions, are they better or are they worse?” she said. “We do that throughout the 14-day quarantine.”

Those working in businesses and the foodservice industry are still expected to wear masks and practice the “healthy at work” guidelines, such as disinfecting between customers and helping customers maintain social distance.

“As the economy opens up, and we understand with the gatherings, we expect to see more cases and then also due to increased testing, we expect to see more cases,” she said. “I am really encouraging and strongly recommending that individuals wear masks because the science behind it says it is a protection barrier.”

Miller said even though daily life may be getting back to normal, health officials are still encouraging social distancing – maintaining a six-foot distance from individuals – as well as practicing good hygiene and disinfecting common household areas and items daily.

“We don’t want to get lax in our control measures,” she said. “We want to make sure that even though we are wearing those masks, we want to remember the six-foot distancing. So we want to keep all of those measures in place like hygiene, proper hand-washing, sanitizing and making sure we’re disinfecting things daily. We want to keep those control measures in place.”