(Atlantic) Linda Edelman with Cass County Public Health and Darci Young with Cass County Memorial Hospital were invited to the Cass County Board of Supervisors meeting this morning to discuss the latest on COVID-19.
Since the Cass County Courthouse is a public place, the Supervisors and other employees had questions on what they should do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“I would consider you guys similar to a business and they’re telling people to just get some of your plans ready just like you would if there were any other illness that would take a lot of people out of your workplace and make sure you’re washing your hands, covering your cough and don’t come into work if you’re sick,” said Edelman. “If you do have symptoms, you need to NOT run into the doctor, you need to call first.”
Linda Edelman said the Iowa Department of Public Health and CDC have a lot of information available to the public. “This is a very rapidly changing situation and I ask everybody to please not panic and to make sure that they are checking the appropriate resources. If you want the most up-to-date information you need to go to the Iowa Department of Public Health website, idph.iowa.gov, and the information on there is changing daily.”
Iowa also has set up a hotline you can call: 211.
Edelman said the public is still at more risk of catching the flu than Coronavirus. “You still need to take those precautions that you have taken and should have taken all your entire life as far as cleaning and hygiene and keeping yourself healthy just like you would in flu season.”
Darci Young said if someone needed to be tested for Coronavirus, they would be swabbed just like with the flu. “They physician actually will reach out to the Iowa Department of Public Health to make sure that it’s appropriate to test that patient and if they decide that it is appropriate to test that patient then that will be sent off to be tested. They’re trying to be very conservative, I think, with testing because they don’t want to run out of testing supplies. So, at the Hospital ourselves we can’t actually test for the virus, it has to be sent to Iowa City.”
Young said they have a task force set up at the hospital and they meet every day. She said they follow IDPH and CDC guidelines and every time there is a change they are adapting their task force to that.
