Buncombe County Government, NC Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates, 23 Apr 2020

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From YouTube: Buncombe County COVID-19 Update (April 23, 2020)

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The April 23, 2020 COVID-19 Update from Buncombe County Government. For local, accurate information about COVID-19 in Buncombe County you can visit https://www.buncombecounty.org/countycenter/news-detail.aspx?id=18543

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Good afternoon today is April 23rd 2020. Today's community update on the Cova 19 response in Buncombe County includes updates from dr. Jennifer mullendore Buncombe County interim public health director and Fletcher tow Buncombe County Public Health preparedness director. My name is Stacie wood and I serve as a public information officer here in the Emergency Operations Center.

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Today's Facebook live feed is also available in Spanish and is aired on the Buncombe County Health and Human Services Facebook page at BC HHS. Today we will get started with dr. Malin door.

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Good afternoon, as of noon today, there have been 51 lab, confirmed cases of kovat 19 in Buncombe County residents. There remain three kovat 19 associated deaths in Buncombe County.

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At this time there are no lab confirmed cases of koban 19 and any nursing homes or congregate living facilities in the county.

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Our local hospitals are not seeing an increase in patient volumes.

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With regards to 10 for kovat 19, approximately 2170 tests have been conducted by providers in Buncombe County for Buncombe County residents, and this count now includes rapid tests conducted at Mission Hospital.

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Buncombe County has been, and continues to be in conversation with local urgent cares, who have adapted their processes to ensure safe assessment and testing of individuals with symptoms of kovat, 19 I.

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Specifically want to acknowledge and applaud the efforts of range, urgent care and mercy. Urgent cares. They are doing all they can to meet the need for increasing kovat 19 testing in the community.

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We are working with our local federally qualified health centers to see how they can help us get testing out into under-resourced parts of our community.

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We have put out a request to our local hospital systems to see how they can support increased testing in our community and the region as a whole.

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The county's goal and my personal goal is to ensure that anyone with symptoms of kovat 19 can get tested, regardless of where they live in Buncombe County. What language they speak, how much money they have and whether they have health insurance or not.

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At this point, public health experts believe that Cova 19 will be something we will still be dealing with in the fall and into next year.

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Buncombe counties, kovat, 19 response and recovery will be successful if we are able to increase testing in our area, identify the close contacts to those individuals and follow the trends to know when we can ease back on the restrictions that we have put into place.

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This is a highly contagious virus and until there is a vaccine, this will be our new normal.

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This is why we want to be clear. We are in this together, all of us, the residents and staff of the long-term care facilities, the grocery store workers stocking the shelves, health care providers, those who are working in factories and on farms.

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First responders.

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All of us living throughout Buncombe County- we are in this together and every one of us the efforts that we each make will determine how our response ends up and how the impact of that response.

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We are all dependent on each other, and this is truly a community of we.

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We applaud the F of everyone in the county who early on, took this situation very seriously, and men took action by staying at home and reducing the contact they had with others outside of their immediate household.

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We appreciate those who have innovated to address kovat 19, and we appreciate the efforts of everyone who is tackling this reality head-on right now and doing the best they can under these difficult circumstances,.

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We are grateful for the thoughtfulness and generosity that we see out in our community, even in these extremely hard times, people in Buncombe County roll up their sleeves and get to work. To do the right thing.

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Thank you and stay safe.

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Good afternoon I'm Fletcher Tov welcome county public health emergency preparedness director, public health continues to develop a comprehensive strategy to slowly and methodically reopen our community and economy.

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We are looking at a phased approach that will allow lower risk activities and businesses to gradually resume operations first and then slowly ease restrictions across the community as conditions and data trends allow. We will have a draft proposal for leadership to review early next week.

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We continue to look at the latest guidance and data available as we determine when to take the steps to reopen Buncombe County and when the time is right to start reopening. That process will be deliberately slow and gradual. I want to end sighs that, although Buncombe County is proactively developing these plans, it does not necessarily mean that any of these steps will be taking place next week when the governor's current order expires on Wednesday.

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We have been fortunate to have overall low number of cases here, but as a nation, over the last week, we've doubled our kovat related deaths from twenty-six thousand to forty eight thousand people dying as a nation. We are still seeing over 2,000 covert related deaths a day.

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We need time to determine if these trends will continue and how they will affect us locally.

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Several neighboring states have plans to rapidly reopen their communities. We need time to determine if these actions will have significant impacts on the western north carolina and what the trends will look like in those states.

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We understand that there is an intense tug-of-war right now between efforts to safeguard public health for the sake of people's lives and the need to reopen our communities and economies for the sakes of people's livelihoods and I want to ensure everyone that difficult holistic discussions about the impacts of our decisions occur during every single phase of our planning process to get to a place where we can relax restrictions. Governor Cooper has given us a roadmap to a new normal. There are three main efforts. We need to emplace to begin reopening one.

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We need more testing this week. Guidance changes in the state to allow for broader testing of symptomatic individuals and locally we're striving to connect community, the community of local providers and increased testing to we need to increase our capacity for con at tracing locally. We are developing staff, depth and trainings to meet the increased demand for contact tracing which will result from our increased testing and three. We need consistent downward trends in positive cases and other leading indicators locally.

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We have been developing a tool that will help us determine those trends, while also connecting people to testing and supporting extensive contact. Tracing I'd like to preview this tool with you. Now it's a locally developed, covin, 19 self checker, and it will go live on Monday afternoon if you're experiencing kovat like symptoms or concerned about a possible exposure. This self checker is the most convenient way for you to get guidance on what your next steps need to be, and it may connect you to testing resources and follow-up from health care professionals at an individual level.

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The information we compile with this tool will also assist Public, Health and anticipating surges on our healthcare systems and help coordinate our testing and contact tracing efforts as we work to reopen our community. It's a quick, confidential, easy to use assessment tool. You can use online or by phone to determine if you may have Kovan 19 and how you can proceed to get medical care, and we will have more information and details to share with you at Monday's community update.

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All of that is to say that Buncombe County is moving aggressively to meet governor's, cooper's 3 benchmarks for a new normal and a safe and diligent manner. Thank you.

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Before we leave today, we wanted to make the community aware that our nonprofit partner, United Way of Asheville in Buncombe County reports a need for a hand, sanitizer cleaning supplies and non-perishable food items to donate supplies, visit hands on Asheville dot-org for more information about how to contribute.

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Please continue to visit Buncombe County org for information on covin 19 in Buncombe County. Thank you for staying informed about our liquor, local response. We will provide our next community update on Monday April 27th until then stay safe.