Buncombe County Government, NC Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates, 11 Jun 2020

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From YouTube: Buncombe County COVID-19 Community Update for June 11, 2020

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Buncombe County COVID-19 Community Update for June 11, 2020

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Good afternoon and welcome to the June 11th community update on the Cova 19 response in Buncombe County, my name is Stacey. Wood and I serve as a public information officer here in the Emergency Operations Center. As a reminder, this community update is available in Spanish on the Buncombe County Health and Human Services Facebook page, and that can be found on Facebook at BC HHS and today we'll go ahead and get started with an update from dr. Jennifer mullendore, the interim public health director and medical director in Buncombe County.

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Good afternoon, as of noon today, there have been 418 lab, confirmed cases of kovat 19 in Buncombe County residents.

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144 of these individuals are currently in isolation.

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We remain at 34 Buncombe County residents, who have died from kovat 19, including 29 residents of two nursing homes that are experiencing outbreaks there now outbreaks at five nursing homes in the county. An outbreak is considered to be two or more cases in a facility.

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So far, these outbreaks involve a total of 91 residents and 68 staff with lab confirmed, Co vat19.

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As cases are not art, as cases are counted in the county of residence and some of these long-term care facility staff are not Buncombe County residents, they do not show up. In our total case, count of 418.

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With regard to testing, since early May over 4100 kovat 19 tests have been performed on residents and staff of long-term care facilities in Buncombe County.

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656 individuals have been tested at the ten community testing sites completed so far throughout the county, so through yesterday, with the site's this week, being the busiest.

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15 of the 440 individuals tested during the first three weeks of testing at these sites were found to be infected with kovat 19 results from the testing performed. This week are pending.

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Testing is recommended for anyone with symptoms suggestive of kovat 19.

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Those symptoms may include fever, chills, cough shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, sore throat, loss of taste or smell nasal congestion, runny nose, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea.

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Testing is also recommended for close contacts of individuals known to have kovat 19, regardless of whether those close contacts have symptoms or not.

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Testing is also recommended if individuals in certain groups believe they may have been exposed to kovat 19, whether or not they have symptoms.

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Those people include those who live or have regular contact with high-risk settings such as long-term care facilities, homeless, shelters or migrant, farmworker camps, individuals and historically marginalized populations, who have been disproportionately impacted by kovat 19, so black indigenous and people of color, who may be at higher risk for exposure.

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Frontline and essential workers such as grocery store clerks gas station attendants, childcare workers, construction workers and workers in food processing plants when they work in settings where social distancing is difficult to maintain health care workers and first responders, and then individuals who are at high risk for severe illness such as people over the age of 65 and people of any age, with underlying health conditions.

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Additionally, people who have attended mass gatherings could have been exposed to someone with kovat, 19 and massive gatherings can include things like marches and rallies, but also cookout parties and funerals.

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Testing should be considered for those individuals who attended such gatherings, especially if they were in crowds or situations where they couldn't practice effective social distancing.

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The sooner we can identify infection with kovat 19, the better able we are to stop the spread to others again with regard to win individuals who don't have symptoms of Kovan 19, but have a potential exposure to somebody with kovat 19 when those individuals should be tested, the ideal time would be 6 days after that exposure.

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However, if you develop symptoms, you should be tested immediately. So please contact a health care provider. If you have symptoms of kovat 19 or meet the criteria for testing.

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If your healthcare provider does not provide testing contact, one of the local urgent cares or clinics that does offer testing such as range Urgent, Care, Mercy, Urgent Care in their four locations, make Family Health Center at Biltmore, Mission virtual health, fast med and CVS on Hendersonville Road.

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Community testing is going on right now. How did the bunk out at the Buncombe, County, Sports, Park and Inca, and community testing will be available next week on Tuesday June 16th? There will be a drive-through testing site at the main, a BTech campus behind the allied health building from 1 to 4 p.m.

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and next Thursday June 18th testing will be at the Grant Center at 285 Livingston Street from 1 to 4 p.m. at the grand center there's, not a lot of room for parking, so we want to make sure you understand that that is intended for walk up testing. The line for cars will be on Livingston Street.

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There is no out-of-pocket cost to the testing for the testing at these community testing sites, but we do ask that those who have health insurance, including Medicaid or Medicare, bring their insurance card with them so that their insurance can be billed for the cost of the test and language services are available at these community testing sites.

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It's important to remember that anyone can can contract and spread CO vat19, even seemingly healthy, in an asymptomatic individuals in our community and throughout all the testing. We've done so far. Many people who end up testing positive for kovat 19 have had very mild symptoms and some have had no symptoms at all and while most cases of kovat, 19 and children are mild, older individuals and people with underlying medical conditions like diabetes, asthma and heart disease are more at risk for becoming severely ill from Kovan 19.

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But we wants to remember that this infection can cause serious illness in anyone of any age.

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Covin 19 is spreading in our community. This is a fact it's based on data, and there are real people who have been affected with kovat 19.

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Our communicable disease nurses and contact tracers speak with them every day through contact tracing our health department and the kovat 19 community team members from community care of North Carolina reach out to individuals who may have recently come into close contact with someone who test positive for kovat 19.

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They connect them with the information and resources they need to protect themselves and their loved ones. It is critically important that people answer the call when contact tracers, reach out.

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You will be contacted by an initial text from the number for five: three nine four or an email from DHHS NC gov, with follow-up phone calls from our health department or NC outreach. Their number is eight four, four, six, two, eight seven, two two three! So please respond to these texts: phone calls or emails.

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The community team of contact tracers will never ask for anyone's social security, number bank or credit card numbers or any other financial information, and any information shared during the call is a private health record in this strictly confidential.

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Let's not lose sight of the fact that we are in a global pandemic. Let's not not lose sight of the fact that there are simple steps we can all take together to stand up to this challenge.

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Please keep your physical distance from others, wash your hands often and wear a face covering when in public.

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Thank you and stay safe.

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So before we leave, you just wanted to say that this marks our 35th community update on the Cova 19 response in Buncombe County, and we know that in times of certainty and with many unknowns, consistent, accurate and timely information is critical and very sincerely. We have showed up to each and every one of these community updates with our community and our hearts and on our minds, and we appreciate your efforts to stay engaged during this unprecedented global pandemic.

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Big thanks to our American sign language, interpreters, Regina and Ashley, who provide us guidance and helped us tremendously, as we provide information to our deaf and hard of hearing audiences. We also want to thank Sims Otley for providing simultaneous Spanish interpretation. They are behind the scenes at every single one of these community updates working to bring this information to our spanish-speaking populations in real-time Kogan. 19 is a marathon not a sprint, so we are going to adjust our communications accordingly.

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As a reminder, starting next week, we will provide a press release on Mondays with pertinent updates from the weekend, and we will provide a community update like we're doing right now, along with simultaneous Spanish interpretation on Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. we will also provide a follow-up media Q&A with our local media partners, who we are also thankful for, have a safe and healthy weekend, and we will be back next Thursday with the next community update.

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