Household recovers from COVID

DAYTON–Columbia County Public Health reported five active cases with three recovered and 173 negative tests as of Monday, June 29. There have been no new positive cases reported since the last outbreak which were in one household.

Shane McGuire, CEO of the Columbia County Health System (CCHS), indicated that before the recent seven cases hit a few weeks ago, that they had become “relaxed” or “complacent” with only the one positive and long-since-recovered case since March.

“It started with one individual who actually made it through the first stage of screening into the building,” McGuire said. “And so, we have staff members who had to excuse themselves for three days while they were screened and we waited for the results from that. If that person had presented early on in this, there’s probably no way they would have made it through the first stage of the screening,” he continued. “But because we were so used to not having it in our community, it created a lot of contact tracing for Public Health.

“We learned a lot through that process,” McGuire said. “Acute Care and the Clinics and others all stepped up heartedly because I think we did something like 56 or 60 swabs in a three-day period as a result of contact tracing. That one initial case led to seven more positive cases. We have now been seeing a real slowdown in the contact tracing. We are hoping this won’t go any further in the community,” McGuire said.

CCHS has been managing its way through the Coronavirus Pandemic with the help of CARES Funding, according to CCHS accountants and McGuire. “The result is still supporting a positive net position for our otherwise operating impacted financials. Without the CARES funding, we would be carrying a $498k net loss from May in addition to the $224k net loss is April.”

Business continues to improve with increased in-patient and out-patient care. CCHS is active in promoting business and care for patients by promoting two new providers Tammy Demean and Jennifer Burnett and advertising the Wound Care Program. Some of the promotions have been through social media and creating informational videos.

Projects for the Assisted Living and Dental Care are gaining more focus and plans are being laid to proceed with both. McGuire said in regards to the Assisted Living project, “We are looking for construction timelines, as well as firm financial and agreement requirements to move forward, and put together contract language to be approved by the board.”