Tuesday, April 14 Community Briefing

Bob Wright re: Newman Regional Health Response

County EOC update:

• How long will social distancing continue as it is today, and when the time comes, how can it be phased out in a way that makes sense for the community and doesn’t risk an increase in transmission?
• Population density in Emporia is significantly higher than the average in Kansas
• Help the community understand that it may still be quite some time before we can gather in any significant number within our community
• Flint Hills Community Health Center got 120 test kits from state distribution
• Continue following state and CDC guidelines on testing prioritization due to shortage

# of inpatients currently in COVID unit – 3; none intubated

Cumulative # of COVID admissions – 8 (27% admission rate based on community positives)

Average length of stay for COVID patients – 14 days

Determination of discharge – medically stable to isolate at home and meet discharge criteria (7 days since the onset of symptoms OR fever free for 72 hours without fever-reducing medication along with significant improvement in symptoms– whichever is longer)

Respiratory Clinic #s – average of 7 daily (Monday-Friday)

Drive Thru #s – average of 5 daily (Monday-Friday)

Tests administered to date – 195 individuals tested within the NRH health system with 28 resulting positive and 13 pending; results in a 15% positive rate

May experience a full COVID-19 unit within the facility of end of this week and beginning of next which would be a total of 8 COVID-19 positive patients at any one given time.

Newman Regional Health Medical Partners

• Virtual visits – began April 13 through electronic health record system, Meditech; access through the patient portal; patients seen virtually that screen positive for COVID will be referred to the drive thru specimen collection for COVID-19 testing. Read more  https://www.newmanrh.org/virtualvisits
• Well visits in AM (20% of volume); sick visits in the afternoon
• Increasing # of clinic providers

Outpatient appointments – recommended to come wearing a personal mask

Currently not feasible to use community donated cloth masks to provide to every patient coming in; will continue to mask patients with signs/symptoms and educate on the importance of social distancing within the facility and waiting rooms

Test delays = impact to # of Lyon Co. positive cases

• In-house BioFire panel that tests for respiratory diseases will not receive FDA approval prior to June
• Abbott point-of-care tests will not be coming to Kansas any time soon
• Fall of 2020 – Abbott will be releasing a serum test for antibodies
• Antibody stick tests – not specific to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19); anyone with active antibodies for any type of coronavirus will test positive making it a difficult test to utilize for COVID-19 cases
• Currently nothing available to do SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) antibody testing

Patient/Visitor/Employee screening process

• Consistent screening questions for all
• Patient receives a pass upon completion of screening to help provide staff with necessary information as it relates to patient screening, mask, etc.
• If a patient screens positive when completing the verbal health screening, they will be provided with a mask to wear during the entirety of their stay
• Visitor receives a pass upon completion of screening with educational reminders – hand hygiene, limit interactions, visit restrictions

Personal Protective Equipment

• 5 days on hand of procedure masks (ear loop masks will be depleted by Saturday – move to tie masks)
• Current inventory of N95s = 1,800
• County stockpile – 5,000 procedure masks and 9,000 N95s
• Continuation of Powered Air Purifying Respirator use for PUI/+
• Masks and goggles used for all patient care encounters