Updated at 6:10 p.m.
In its biggest one-day report, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital reported 20 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend as a sign of trouble for the island as it saw an increase in confirmed cases.
In a phone call with the Times, Tisbury health agent and health spokeswoman Maura Valley’s board confirmed that at least seven of the 20 cases were employees of the Croning Market, then considered a cluster. Its 10 employees have tested positive for the virus. Contact tracing is carried out on all cases to determine where the virus has spread to others. Valley said some cases of Crohn’s are symptomatic while others are not.
“I think it’s definitely a community spread. “What we’re seeing is some families and social groups, but we’re still in the process of tracing the contact and trying to understand what that means,” Valley said.
In response to numerous calls from Cronig’s customers, Valley said close contacts are individuals who have been close to six feet or a positive person for more than 15 minutes in a day’s time.
“Most customers in a grocery store do not meet the definition of close contact. If the buyers in Kronig have concerns, they can schedule an exam through TestMV, ”Valley said. “Concerns about risk factors due to underlying conditions should be considered with their primary care physician.”
Early Monday morning, the island’s health agents met with the hospital to discuss the progress of the case. The hospital incident is back in command, the first blow of the disease when it was the set of protocols they used earlier this year.
The incident order is the hospital’s emergency preparedness state. The hospital has a daily exercise where they stumble and call the management to discuss what is going on with the operation of the hospital. Now in the incident order, the hospital focuses on the growing cases that it discusses on a daily basis.
“How we do our exercise will increase communication,” hospital CEO Dennis Sheppici said during a call with the Times on Monday evening. “We go through the supply, the personnel, the current situation. There is a mechanism for creating a tight communication for emergency preparedness. We exercise whether it is a coward, a bomb threat, a fire or an emergency. “
The hospital is not stopping or shutting down any services at this time.
According to Claire Seguin, chief nurse and COO on the same call, determining when to file an incident order is a data-driven choice. Once the emergency that signaled it, the hospital would close the incident order.
Now the health board and hospital are working on educating people about spreading the community, reaching out to the community to wear masks, social distance and prevent social gatherings outside the family, according to Valley.
The hospital will go ahead and work with health agents to focus on meeting density and educate people not to be cheerful, SKPC said.
“This time we said we could be more sensitive to the upswing, the weather is getting colder, people are in the vicinity, coward fatigue. I know everyone is tired.
He added that while many people continue to practice proper masks and social distance, they do not pose a problem for everyone.
The increase in cases over the past few weeks has been more severe in the summer than in the first six months of the epidemic, especially in the summer when the island saw an influx of tourists.
“It’s so frustrating,” Valley said. “You would think ‘oh wow we made it during the summer’ and we had people who were cautious and safe and we still have a lot of people tested. I’m not sure we’ve started to see some community spreading, other than that. What a credit … it’s very disappointing. “
According to Seguin, none of those hospitalized over the weekend were hospitalized, but most of the symptoms in the new cases were therapeutic.
“We do primarily therapeutic testing for patients here so I would say yes, almost all had symptoms,” Seguin said.
SKPC said the island could not put its guards down despite calling it “protected fatigue”.
“It’s frustrating,” Scapy said. “It’s not surprising when you have big gatherings. It started with a wedding four weeks ago and now we have a cluster in Kronig. It happens when there are a lot of people close to you, not wearing masks and the behavior changes that we are really doing so well. “
The surge in hospital cases continues a worrying trend for the island which has seen 53 new cases in the last two weeks. The spike began on October 26 when a cluster of cases was tied to an island wedding. Health societies have confirmed that at least 10 cases have been linked to marriage since then.
In the past two weeks, these 53 cases accounted for 37 percent of the island’s 141 confirmed cases. Another 63 percent of cases were reported during the other eight months when testing began in March.
TestMV has now tested 19,514 individuals since the trial began in May. Of these, 47 are positive, 19,021 are negative and 446 are pending. The city of Aquinas also does its own testing. Aquina tested 312 individuals with zero positive, 305 negative and seven pending results.
On Monday, 20 new cases were spread in each age category for people over 70 years of age. Six new cases were reported in his 40s, four in his 30s, three in his 20s, three in his 50s, two in his 60s, and two in his 20s.
Of the total 141 confirmed cases, 78 are women and 63 are men. A total of 29 are in their 20s, 28 are in their 30s, 25 are in their 50s, 18 are younger than 20, 18 are in their 40s, 16 are in their 60s, and seven are over 70s.
On Friday, a Health Board report said that of all the confirmed cases, 103 are no longer pathological and have been released from loneliness. One was lost in pursuit and the other is followed by public health officials. The number of non-typical individuals released from isolation is updated every Friday.
Update to include comments from hospital officials – Ed.
