— from Brendan Cowan, County Department of Emergency Management —
“The [first Orcas Island resident to be infected with coronavirus patient is in stable condition and is being treated at home,” said Dr. Frank James, San Juan County Health Officer. “The patient was seen by their physician after experiencing COVID-like symptoms. The COVID-19 test was administered at the UW Medicine Orcas Island Clinic in Eastsound, test results were received on Friday, March 20.
Dr. James said, “The patient is isolated and being treated at home. Family members residing in the home are being quarantined. County Health staff have contacted a small number of people who have had close contact with the patient. These individuals are being guided to quarantine themselves at home and to monitor themselves for fever and respiratory symptoms for 14 days following their last exposure.”
As of March 20, this is the first San Juan County resident who has tested positive for COVID-19. According to Dr. James, “We have expected a confirmed COVID-19 case to happen and we have planned for this occurrence. Our public health team works every day to identify, track, and follow up on cases of all potential disease exposures to protect the health and safety of everyone throughout the San Juan Islands. This will be no exception.”
San Juan County health officials remind everyone that if you feel sick and have mild symptoms, stay home. If you feel you have more serious symptoms or if you are at risk for severe illness, stay home and call your health provider. Do not report to a clinic or to the hospital. Follow your doctor or health provider’s direction. If you feel the situation is urgent and life threatening, call 911.
Health officials also recommend that citizens limit contact with others, even if they are not feeling sick, in order to limit community spread of COVID-19.
For more information and if you have access to the internet, please visit our informational webpage at www.sanjuanco.com and click on the “COVID-19 Information” bar at the top of the page. You can also visit the San Juan County Health and Community Services Facebook page . The San Juan County COVID-19 Hotline (360-370-7500) is staffed M-F 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the State of WA Hotline (800-525-0127) is staffed from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., 7 days a week.
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It would be advisable to test for COVID-19 all those people who have been identified as coming in close contact with the identified patient, so that public health officials have a good idea of the extent of the “community spread” that may have resulted. This is what SHOULD have been done following the first COVID-19 case in Snohomish County in January, but was not because of the lack of credible testing. And look what happened.
Dr. James, have there been follow-up tests of these close contacts?
The Orcas Island community deserves an answer, hopefully in the affirmative.
I absolutely agree with Michael Riordan that testing of all contacts of the confirmed Covid-19 case on Orcas is essential. Isolation of these contacts while awaiting the outcome of further testing is essential.
If our country has heeded the warnings about the severity of this novel virus and implemented strict testing and isolation of confirmed and suspected cases, we would not have been forced to essentially shut down our society. See the following article.
National Post
How Taiwan and Singapore managed to contain COVID-19, while letting normal life go on
The countries seem to have found the sweet spot between a ‘it’s just like the flu’ reaction, and imposition of economically devastating …
20 hours ago
The situation is changing so rapidly. At around 11 AM on March 21, 2020, the Washington Post published the following, “Health officials in New York, California and other hard-hit parts of the country are restricting coronavirus testing to health care workers and people who are hospitalized, saying the battle to contain the virus is lost and the country is moving into a new phase of the pandemic response.”
This is due to a lack of Personal Protective Equipment for healthcare workers
The New Yorker Covid-19 coverage is free for all readers.
See: Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers
What Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s success is teaching us about the pandemic.
By Atul Gawande
I spoke with Dr. James at about 5 pm on Saturday, and the testing situation he described is not pretty. Because of the limited availability of tests and the time it takes to get results back from the Quest Diagnostics lab in California, testing is limited to health-care workers, EMTs, and patients over 65 who show flu-like symptoms. There were other factors he mentioned that I cannot go into here. But the upshot is that people who came in close contact with Patient 1 (my term) are not being tested. I believe he said they have been quarantined and are being closely watched for symptoms of Covid-19.