How Whatcom is spending millions on the Health Department in the COVID-19 fight

Whatcom County’s Health Department has received an additional $4.5 million in CARES Act funds and recently has hired nurses and an epidemiologist and is hiring more staff with the pandemic relief funds, administered through the state Department of Health.

Council members authorized spending requests related to that money at the Sept. 29 meeting, Deputy Executive Tyler Schroeder told The Bellingham Herald in an email.

Because the CARES money will be reimbursed by the federal government under the $2.2 trillion stimulus package that Congress passed in March, adding new employees avoids conflict with a countywide hiring freeze enacted in the face of declining revenues from the economic downturn, Schroeder said.