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Community Meeting Recap Summary
Greg Poschman – Pitkin County Commissioner/Board of Health
We are doing great in Pitkin County but we need to adhere to the 5 commitments of containment
There was an outbreak in El Jebel that shows we are not out of the woods yet. Many people were concerned about this outbreak and overwhelmed the called center at Aspen Valley Hospital
AVH is not testing people who have had no contact with the individuals or aren’t showing any symptoms of COVID- 19.
If you are a concern, Contact tracers will contact you and walk you through all the steps you need to know.
As we open more, outbreaks like this shouldn’t be a surprise. It tells us that we cannot become complacent and that we must continue with the good work we have done so far
Tracy Trulove -Pitkin County Public Information Officer
The “box it in” strategy is what public health has been putting in place. Public Health has been expecting and preparing for the possibility for an outbreak to occur. This is what should be expected once we start lifting bans and the town becomes busier.
There is a methodology around case investigation and tracing. That is the discovery of information to understand the full scope of the outbreak. “Box it in” is designed to support this outbreak. We have the capacity for testing, we can isolate individuals, we can quarantine, and then trace who this person has been in contact with to slow the spread.
Do not start calling Aspen Valley Hospital. Public Health will reach out to you and walk you through the steps, if there’s a potential that you’ve been exposed to Coronavirus. Public health team is working on contact tracing. Working with multiple counties to get prepared because we are not done.
Dave Ressler – Aspen Valley Hospital CEO
The roadmap has 5 criteria that must be met in order to get to the next phase.
- Number of cases suppressed
- Hospital must safely be able to treat patients without reporting to crisis standards of care
-AVH capacity matrix let AVH assess the resources and capacity to safely treat patients without being overwhelmed.
- We are comfortable as it relates to the three trends that we will be observing:
- Inpatient hospitalization
- Daily Visits
- Availability of workforce to be able to take care of our patients
-For example, with inpatient hospitalization, if we get to less than 50% capacity, we are cautious. If we get to the point that we have less than 25% capacity left, we are concerned.
It is our individual responsibility to curb the spread of this virus. “Cautious” indicates something is going wrong.
Q: Regarding inpatient availability
A: If beds become more full it means we are doing something wrong. We have five ventilators but it is not best to have a patient on a ventilator at altitude. We tend to transfer patients in need of a ventilator. If we start to fill up and cannot transport, it becomes a problem. We have a total of eight negative pressure beds: 4 in the ICU and 4 in the patient care area. We will keep people in the ICU even if they aren’t in serious condition to keep patients together. We are assessing how patients can be moved around and managed to determine our ability to treat patients.
Q: Visits on a daily basis
A: Seeing more respiratory visits but there are still a lot of negative tests. Testing is up but that is because it has become widely available. We look at respiratory tent visits. ER Visits and Community visits to assess our capacity.
- Testing:
We are testing a lot and we are proud to be with public health in that challenges
We want to test any symptomatic patients. It is the first way to identify and “box it in”.
We want to test symptomatic patients because symptoms show a viral load on the body that will show up in the test
Some asymptomatic patients test positive but it isn’t reliable so resources go to testing symptomatic patients
Need assistance managing symptoms – call a primary care physician.. Primary care physician may refer you to the respiratory evaluation center if you’re having moderate symptoms.
Minor symptoms – not sure? Still called primary care physician. Tent moved in house because of summer weather conditions
We are Using nasal swabs and we have the ability to test in our lab. Positive test will be confirmed shortly afterwards
Negative results are not assurance that you don’t have the virus. It is still possible to have it
25-30% false negative
Tests
Total: 554 test
Positive: 27 have tested positive which results in a 5% rate. State epidemiologists say if you are doing enough testing you should have 10% or less positive test. We are doing good so thank you
Negative 515
Pending 12
Conducting PCR tests through private are included in results
Q: Why is the number of community tests a metric
A: More general. It is a good indicator because if the virus spreads more people will be coming in to test. If only the number of tests goes up we may not move into a cautious area.
Q: Why cannot not all metrics be charted as a daily update. Why are only positive test updated
A: We want to look at trends in positive tests. If we start seeing more positive tests, it shows the virus is spreading.
Other data like patients visiting hospital isn’t that reliable because there are multiple factors as to why that goes up . Not helping with data tracking of COVID-19
Nan Sundeen
Director of Pitkin County Human Services
Mass care and shelter
Working with community to help families and people impacted by covid
Senior services – Meals transportation, programs
Protective services – Prevent and intervention
Economic eligibility for welfare programs
LEAP, SNAP
Veterans Services – assistance with claims/resources
Health Community Fund – $3 million social safety net
Covid Responsibilities
Ensure safe and adequate shelter house
Provide mass food and supplies
Support people with access and functional needs (over 60 disabled disenfranchise homeless unemployment, etc.)
Enhance youth, family, and individual well being
Ensure continuity of all normal services
Make sure everyone gets what they need
Chad Federwitze – Senior Services Manager
Responding to a disaster involves many organization working together
Homeless and AFN services
Case management expansion – To reach out and need assistance with special needs who may have difficulty accessing information and help.
Medically necessary non congregate shelter – Applied to FEMA through public assistance program. Allowed us to contract with hotels and provide services to three populations. People who become COVID positive and cannot go home and isolate. People exposed to COVID who can’t quarantine safely at home
People over 65 with underlying conditions that have a high risk of contracting and can’t go home/ Less than 10 people in the hotel. Services extended through june 8
Emergency overnight shelter at HHS building – Set up march 14th,
Safe outdoor Space at the intercept lot: For people who can’t go to homeless shelters or didn’t want to congregate. Received help from ski co and Town of Snowmass VIllage to create campsites.. 17 people are staying at the intercept lot. Working really well, people keeping clean and orderly with very few problems. Everyone is adhering to 5 commitments of Containment
SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) caseload : Increase 62%, 293 active cases
Regular applications are up 638%( not everyone qualifies but we do our best)
Expedited SNAP application: 7 days to make a decision. Up 577%
Monthly totally issuance increase to 30,000 a month in March to over 90,000 in April
Brings money to not only individuals but to the community
Emergency financial relief
Prior to COVDI: $40,000 a year
In last few month $2.2 million went to rent assistance, food assistance, and utility assistance
Ski co was first group of volunteers to help call people in March to approve cases
All the help form the community has been amazing
We have assistance for undocumented individuals as well because this is a disaster and everyone needs to be helped
Food distribution
Served almost 2000 households worth of food in 4 different areas
Good story of the collected effort from the community to help distribute food.
Moving forward we are working with different partners to reopen Aspen Lift Up location with more staff
Some mobile pantries may close and shift so we can get location back up and running
Human services mass care and housing Recovery focus
Supporting public health goals and objectives
Sustainability of community programming and partnerships (short term to long term)
Individual and family economic stability
Focus on high risk/vulnerable populations
Senior services focusing on socially supporting older adults. More than just meals. Senior center closed so we are shifting focus to a virtual platform to see a big list of resources to support the older population.
Not everyone has access so we are coming up other ways for community partners to socially engage with older adults who don’t have the means to use virtual resource
Q: Are we tracking human services resources
A: Tracking where people come from and creating maps for where people need help. Looking for areas that need help. Families were being turned away in April for food distribution but we are on top of it now and families are not denied. The Food Bank of the Rockies has been a huge support. Local Farmers have also been helping the food banks a great deal.
Q: Devices are tough for older people. What is being done to help this?
A: No magic wand to help this problem. Optimistic on what we are working on and we are coming up with creative ways to help older adults.
Closing statements
Greg Poschman – Pitkin County Commissioner/Board of Health
Please use our voluntary symptom tracker and emotion check in tracker. These give us a lot of data that is important in the fight against COVID-19
Website link: https://covid19.pitkincounty.com/i-want-to/#report-symptoms
Local businesses must understand that the town might not always be able to do 100% enforcement. It comes down to customers, clients, and businesses. There is a large population of older adults who will be watching businesses to see if they are following rules.
Thank you for joining us. Next community meeting will be on June 25, 2020
