Pulaski County residents are being urged to do their part to slow the spread of COVID-19. Brian Ledley with the county’s incident management team says that not only has the county seen a dramatic increase in cases in recent weeks, but the out-of-town hospitals where Pulaski County typically sends its heart attack patients are filling up.
“The very real reality is if we don’t start turning this around, people are just going to start dying,” Ledley told the county commissioners Monday. “They’re going to die from either COVID, or they’re going to die because we can’t get that heart attack out who’s come into our hospital, or people are delaying elective surgeries, biopsies that physicians can’t look at to determine if it’s actually cancer or not. So putting that off puts patients at risk.”
Terri Hansen with the Pulaski County Health Department said they’re having trouble keeping up with contact tracing and other COVID-related duties. “We are getting four or five phone calls from the school every hour, sometimes,” she told the commissioners. “We have both schools, just questions, and every question is different.”
The commissioners agreed to support the Health Department’s request for a new temporary part-time nurse, but the final funding approval will be up to the county council next month.
Coroner Jon Frain told the commissioners that while COVID deaths are not in and of themselves coroner’s cases, he may be called upon to help with death certificates, if numbers increase. “The Health Care Center has contacted me last week asking for my assistance, should it become necessary,” Frain said, “and this goes back to information that I think [County Health Officer] Dr. [Rex] Allman and I released all the way back in March, that I would work together and support them and help them, if need be. That has not happened yet, but they did call me and implement that plan.” Frain added that his office has also seen a slight uptick in suicides and drug overdoses this year.
For now, Ledley says residents need to hunker down and take the necessary precautions over the winter. “Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to look different. It’s one year. Hopefully, we take the necessary steps this year, we get a vaccine next year, and then, by next Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’re sort of somewhat back to normal. But we have to push through.”
Pulaski County Health Officer Dr. Rex Allman said the hope is that a vaccine will be available to anyone who wants it by the end of June, but for things to return to normal, a large percentage of people will actually have to get it. “It’s not perfect,” Allman told the commissioners. “It’s 90-some percent. So if we only have 50 percent of the people vaccinated a year from now, things are not going to be normal.”
In the meantime, Ledley reiterated that the best tools are still wearing a mask, social distancing, and washing your hands.
