By L. Parsons The Winslow City Council held an emergency meeting last Tuesday, March 17, for the purpose of discussing the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the nation. As of the meeting time, Arizona had 18 confirmed cases and Navajo County had zero. Those numbers have increased drastically in the last week with Navajo County confirming 14 cases by Friday, March 20, all of which are on the Navajo Nation near Kayenta. Present at the emergency meeting were the members of the Winslow City Council, with the exception of Rickey Jackson, members of the Action Medical Emergency Services team, Winslow Police Chief Dan Brown and Winslow Fire Chief James Hernandez. Mayor Tom McCauley began the meeting by presenting a resolution to the council allowing the mayor to declare a local emergency and to coordinate emergency operations to mitigate the effects of the novel coronavirus on the City of Winslow. McCauley said, “I don’t think we have time to sit back and wait for this to get worse around our state, I think we need to take action. There are other pending tests out there right now and people need to be informed about what testing means. Just because you’ve had a cough doesn’t mean you need to be tested. Those that will be tested will be those who present exactly what Covid-19 is. Testing everyone is a waste of resources and our health care centers are not in a position to waste those resources.” The resolution read, “The mayor, may, by proclamation, declare a local emergency to exist due to, among other things, a natural or man-made calamity.” The resolution passed unanimously and led to the proclamation declaring an emergency, which also passed without opposition. The proclamation according to McCauley, “Allows John (Barkley, Winslow City Manager) and myself to make informed decisions regarding this issue moving forward.” Little Colorado Medical Center Incident Commander Christy Ross updated the council on the status of the hospital and plans for mitigation. “We are currently in Phase II of our disaster preparedness plan. We began Phase II on March 13 after President Trump’s decree that every hospital activate their hospital command system. We have limited visitation and access and are in daily briefings with Winslow Indian Health Care, the county and state health departments and North Country Health Care, Action Medical and Winslow Police and Fire. We don’t plan on activating Phase III until there are local cases.” Phase III will include hospital lock-down according to Ross. “We are not there yet. We have sent six cases out for testing, but we don’t anticipate any of those coming back positive. We don’t have real high suspicion. In fact, only one we sent out actually met the state criteria for testing. Therefore, five went to our lab and only one went to the state. We will be testing every single pneumonia admit, which is our most common admit. We won’t get results for four days or so, so it is not something that will necessarily change your treatment. It is possible to have both pneumonia and COVID.” Ross explained some of the steps LCMC has taken to ensure safety of patients and staff. “We have four major goals. To prevent and control the spread of COVID-19, to maintain and increase capacity to meet the needs of the community, to assure adequate communication to patients, staff and community and to maintain our business continuity. “We have opened a respiratory clinic within our physician’s clinic. It has a separate entrance, it has a Hepa filter to get it as close to negative pressure as we can, so we are not cross contaminating. We are having our patients call ahead of time, we go out and meet them, put a mask on them and bring them through the separate entrance to the exam room. Our patients that have any respiratory symptoms are not walking through the entire clinic. There is no recommendation right now to do any testing on those without symptoms. We don’t have the capability or capacity to do those tests. We don’t want to use the small amount of resources that we have when it comes to swabs and testing kits.” Ross advised, “Let’s be calm, let’s be reasonable and let’s use the resources that we have including protective equipment wisely. I think this is a marathon, not a sprint.” At 4 p.m. on Friday, March 20, LCMC announced they had their first confirmed case of COVID-19. “LCMC received positive COVID-19 test results on one LCMC patient. The patient was in recommended CDC isolation during their entire time at LCMC. The patient was discharged with self-quarantine restrictions to family from Navajo County, outside the Winslow community. We understand this is a difficult time for our community. LCMC continues to work closely with our partners to care for and protect our community.” An effort has been made to reach out to LCMC for further details with no reply as of press time.
