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Second coronavirus case at Redmond

March 10, 2020–10:26 a.m.

STAFF REPORTS

A second case of coronavirus has been confirmed at Redmond Regional Medical Center.

The hospital was notified Monday night.

From Redmond:

Redmond Regional Medical Center has protocols in place to care for patients with infectious diseases, and we have been working diligently to ensure we are prepared for potential issues related to COVID-19. We are following infection prevention protocols for COVID-19 patients, including isolation, to help ensure the safety of our colleagues, patients, and visitors, and we continue to work closely with the CDC and health department.

As part of our preparations for coronavirus, we have been reinforcing infection prevention protocols, and last week we implemented new screening procedures at hospital entrances as a proactive measure. We have positioned supplies at points of entry so that any potential symptomatic patient who arrives can be properly masked and immediately isolated to protect our colleagues and other patients.

A new disease like coronavirus can cause a lot of fear and uncertainty.

With one COVID-19 patient at Floyd and two more at Redmond, health care professionals are advising the public to stay calm but vigilant and be wary of misinformation.

Dr. Cline Jackson, an emergency room physician at Floyd Medical Center was a guest on Tuesday’s First News with Tony McIntosh.

“We are aggressively isolating patients and isolating ourselves as staff,” he said.  “Anyone who treated the patient that was positive before that was recognized, we have essentially home-quarantined and isolated all these people.  They are not treating patients, they are not seeing people and they are not appearing in the community.  The truth is, thankfully, the vast majority of employees at Floyd had no interaction with anyone with coronavirus.”

Dr. Jackson reiterated that it’s important to take some basic precautions to protect yourself.

“We don’t want to touch our hands to our face,” he stressed.  “We want to minimize the wiping of our eyes, the wiping of our nose and that kind of thing.  Sing Happy Birthday while you’re washing with warm soap and water, and that should be more than enough to take care of this virus and of course all of the other viruses that are floating around that we don’t want to get.  This virus, while it is as contagious as the flu, certainly has a lot more attention right now while we’re still in the early phases of understanding it and trying to figure out exactly what our true fatality rate is here in America.”

The coronavirus outbreak remains a fluid situation with new information about our understanding of the disease coming in every day.

For the most accurate and up-to-date information about coronavirus, you can visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website at cdc.gov.