By L. Parsons Little Colorado Medical Center’s Incident Commander Christy Ross spoke to the Winslow City Council last week. The meeting, the first held in person and open to the public since March, had the hospital update on the agenda. Ross began, “The number of positive COVID-19 cases are falling across the nation. In fact, they are saying that the peak, nationally, was the week of April 6.” She explained that national hospitalization numbers have also fallen and stated that 92 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have at least one comorbidity including high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes. “However,” she continued, “the Arizona Department of Health Services is telling us that Arizona is not seeing a large decrease. We are testing a lot, so more tests mean more positives including those that are asymptomatic. Arizona peaked in May and hospitalizations have dropped to 12 percent over the last two weeks.” She continued by updating the council on local numbers. “Winslow has had a total of 59 COVID-19 positive tests, unfortunately we have also had seven deaths, that number hasn’t changed in three weeks. We are now able to report that we have also had 51 people recover from this virus. The Center for Disease Control doesn’t name someone as recovered until they have had two negative tests. We just don’t have enough tests to do that. So Navajo County is saying that being recovered is being off of isolation for 10 days and have no more symptoms. We do have 27 households being monitored for exposure in the Winslow area right now.” She continued, “If we look at the trends from April 1 until now, those numbers haven’t dramatically increased. However, we are hearing from other places that this comes in waves. So, like Chinle told us, we will have a really bad week and then the next not have any cases at all. So, we are monitoring that. What we don’t know is where these patients are actually from. I can tell you that all of the COVID positive patients we had over the weekend at our hospital were from the WIHCC (Winslow Indian Health Care Center) system. They are having a lot of people come from all over to be tested. We don’t know if they live in the Winslow area.” Mitigation continues to evolve at LCMC, according to Ross. “We have created a separate COVID unit, which now includes a separate nurse’s station and more barriers. That has shown to be more efficient. We are also scheduling more well visits and well child visits in the clinic but we continue to not utilize the waiting room, masks and screenings are required before entry in to any facility and we are walking patients in from their vehicles.” During her last update earlier in the month, Ross spoke about the intent to resume elective surgeries. She gave more up to date information this time. “Elective surgery should resume June 1. Our doctors do want to wait until data is in from the Memorial Day weekend, though. So that may change. That said, it is important to get back to seeing patients. We don’t want the treatment to be worse than the disease. Nationwide, we are seeing people not getting screenings for cancer or (not) getting immunizations. In fact, nationally, 40 percent of patients with stroke or stroke-like symptoms didn’t seek care soon enough to change the outcome. We don’t want that to happen here. We want to encourage people to get regular health screenings and know that we are a safe place. If not, we should really get ready to start seeing poor outcomes because people aren’t seeking care.” Testing for COVID-19 continues at LCMC and at WIHCC as well as the LCMC Physicians Clinic and North Country HealthCare. In addition to those tests, Ross said, “Health care workers were all just tested through the U of A (University of Arizona) partnership that tested for antibodies. We expect results from that very soon. Because of a government mandate, Campus of Care has tested 100 percent of its residents and staff and those results will be in soon as well.” Councilman Kerwin Lawrence expressed his concern to Ross over the reopening of the local economy. He said, “On a national level, the numbers are going down. But if you separate New York from the rest of the country, it actually shows that more people are testing positive. The entire country is not in a downward trend. We cannot operate thinking that because the country seems to be going down that it is okay to just go do whatever we want. The amount of people I see at Clear Creek and in our restaurants without masks and without social distancing is troubling.” Ross responded, “No one is looking at national data in Winslow and saying that we are going to open because those are going down. You have to follow CDC guidelines, and you have to be smart. There was a funeral in Pinon a couple of weeks ago that had 100 people. That’s not smart. There is another side to it, we are seeing suicide and domestic violence numbers rise as well as drug and alcohol use. There is a smart way to socialize for people’s mental well-being.”
