Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County has six COVID-19 patients in its ICU and healthcare workers are concerned about another jump in infections after the Thanksgiving holiday.
During a virtual update to community leaders Tuesday afternoon, Sweetwater County Public Health Officer’s prognosis for the upcoming weeks was grim.
“We’re about to face the consequences of that have been happening,” Dr. Jean Stachon said. “We don’t have it under control here.
As of Tuesday, 230 people across Wyoming have died after being infected with the coronavirus. In Sweetwater County, the death toll is at 10. Eight of those 10 people died in November and three that eight died during the Thanksgiving weekend. According to Deb Sutton, the public relations and marketing manager for Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, the three who died were Rock Springs residents, one man and one woman in their 70s and another woman in her 80s.
While a majority of those deaths occurred to people aged 65 and older, Dr. Melinda Poyer, the hospital’s chief medical officer, said it isn’t just impacting the area’s senior citizens.
“Just because you’re hospitalized doesn’t mean you’re 80 years old,” she said.
Poyer said one COVID-19 patient in the ICU is 41.
While the hospital still has ICU beds available, the impact is on ICU nurses and other respiratory staff. Dr. Stachon said the hospital’s ICU nurses have been working seven-day, 12-hour shifts with one day off between their shifts. As ICU facilities throughout the region fill up, it creates a shortage of nurses and other staff needed to keep those ICUs running effectively. Ronda Zancanella, the public health response coordinator, said the situation in Uinta County has gotten to the point where the hospital there is struggling to find people to work in the ICUs.
With COVID-19 the duration or the severity of a patient’s symptoms varies from person to person and ICU beds, which generally have a turnaround period of three to five days, can be taken up by a COVID-19 patient with symptoms lasting for a month or more. There is no cure for COVID-19, only therapies to help treat the symptoms people experience. Some residents fighting the disease are on oxygen while in isolation at their homes.
Trista Cross, a nurse with Sweetwater County Public Health said the county has recorded 1,845 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, 360 of those are active, which she said are residents in isolation. The rate of positive tests has resulted in Sweetwater County Public Health getting backlogged in its contacting of residents who tested positive for the disease, with many of those confirmation calls taking at least two days to accomplish. In some cases, public health employees have been unable to contact some positive cases for more than a week. Cross said the office has dedicated itself to contacting the high-priority cases first, which are people who may have had contact with others in a closed environment such as a local school where the illness could spread rapidly. The overload has also caused the public health office to ask those who test positive for the disease to do their own contact tracing as they don’t have the manpower to do it themselves.
Testing
Testing is free to anyone at Castle Rock Medical Center or MHSC. The cost of the test is reimbursed through CARES Act funding from the federal government. Castle Rock’s drive through testing is open weekdays 8 a.m. to noon and 1-5 p.m. Castle Rock recommends residents call to make an appointment before showing up for the test.
At MHSC, the drive through testing station is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on weekends form 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. MHSC uses the Curative testing system, which emails results directly to the patient.
Dr. Stachon said discussions are taking place about finding a larger place to conduct testing, such as the Sweetwater County Events Complex, and utilizing the Wyoming National Guard to help with the burden.
Mask mandate
An extended mask mandate is expected to be approved by the state, which will extend it to Jan. 4. Dr. Stachon said the mandate will have different language as well, such as requiring children as young as age 12 to wear a facial mask in public.
Stachon said health directives form Gov. Mark Gordon’s office will be issued later this week with stricter public gathering guidelines than have previously been in place.
While Dr. Stachon and other healthcare workers admit the mask mandate was met with a lot of public backlash, they note residents have largely complied with the mandate.
The county’s healthcare workers hope residents will continue to come together and show care for one another as the pandemic continues.
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