Done with ASTHO Lesson!

I worked on the ASTHO COVID-19 Contact Tracer training lesson this morning and finished all the modules. I got my certificate of completion; I need to submit a copy of it once they have provided us with log-ins for the Laulima system. Then I found out during class that I did not need to finish them all so early! The syllabus gave specific dates that modules must be finished by but it wasn't apparent to me; I just read the email that said to finish the. Aue! They're done so I don't need to worry about them!













After each lesson you have to pass a quiz before you are allowed to move on to the next lesson. I passed!








Here's some of what was covered in this module.






The final module for this online course.








This module included several practice scenarios. Here's one of them.





The last quiz!




And the training evaluation.





I am taking 3 classes and have Zoom sessions 5 days a week. Four of the days - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday - are the Community Contact Tracing Training. Wednesday is Papa ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. It's officially a total of 13.5 hours of class a week but it has actually been more like 15 hours a week. Plus there are the outside videos and a group project for Dr. Ric's class which means more time. I have different colored notebooks to help keep me organized. So far my brain has been functioning. Since they are trying to turn us in to clinicians for the contact tracing, I am really glad that I have had human physiology and anatomy in college and then again in massage school; that means all I need to do is remember the new stuff!


For Papa ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, I'm glad that I had started Duolingo before the class started and kept it up. I have tried to keep up with Duolingo every day and usually more than once a day. I am finding I am responding faster on Duolingo and am correct more of the time. According to Duolingo, I know 280 Hawaiian words; I don't really feel like that. But I have noticed when I listen to songs I can sort of understand what is being said some of the time. Right now I have a couple of kids books that are in both English & Hawaiian; I am looking for more.

For the first portion of Dr. C's class today she had Brooke, a graduate from Cohort #1v2, talk about her experience as a contact tracer on Maui. Brooke was called 15 minutes after she finished the last class session! She talked about why she enrolled in the training, how she had been keeping track of the situation prior to the training, and what she has learned while in this first few weeks of actually doing the contact tracing. She did have one case that was taken back by the supervisor due to concerns of the person about things she was unable to do anything about. Today will be the last day of quarantine for 2 of the cases that she has been responsible for monitoring.





Brooke is a high school teacher; when COVID-19 began, she would show her students the Johns Hopkins map each morning. Initially, it started out as only red dots in China with a large dot in Wuhan. As the virus spread the default map began to cover a larger area with more red dots; now it covers the entire world.

These are the graphics for the outbreak today.

Dr. C also asked Brooke to show us what her team did for their Hoʻike at the end of class. It is an online resource about how to prepare yourself in case you should get a call that you have been exposed to COVID-19 and need to immediately go in to self-quarantine. It's something we can all do right now.






On this last page, they created a new list of resources for Maui County  since the initial list that is given out by the state is Oʻahu-centric. She suggested that teams from other islands do the same for their island.


For lunch I put 2 of the muffin tin omelets in the microwave straight from the freezer. It takes about 2 minutes on high to get them to a decent temperature that's not too hot and not too cold; it's just right!

After lunch Dr. C started out talking about "What is Contact Tracing?" But she did say we would have guest speakers Marjorie from the Medical Reserve Corps and Nicole from the ʻIke Mauli Ola program joining us later to enlighten us on the other parts of the process we needed to complete.






















Part way through Dr. Cʻs presentation, Marjorie from the Medical Reserve Corps was able to join us. She walked people through what the online site looked like and how to navigate to the different pages. She also showed us what the profile page looks like once you have filled out all the information DOH needs to begin the process to enroll a person in MRC.






I made Butter Chicken for dinner tonight but forgot to take photos of it. After I had gotten all the parts together I had time, so I was going to tun over to Otto Cake to pick up cheesecake for dessert; it's what I usually do when I am making dinner for everyone. But I did not get an answer so I hung up, thinking they were out of cheesecake so had gone home early. After dinner I got a call! It was Otto, he said he was open for another 30 minutes and has lots of cheesecake!I quickly ran up there and got 4 pieces; Orange Chocolate Chip, Chinese Almond Cookie, Pineapple Macadamia Coconut, and Maple Bacon.

This is what Otto had at the end of the day. He makes cheesecakes during all hours he is open.

Here's what I bought.

There was a lot of interesting news today about COVID-19 in the state. On of the ones I keyed on were the complaints about contact tracing. I think I've mentioned this before, but several officials are saying nothing is being done to provide more contact tracers; it sounds like they are unaware of the training program. It also seems like they think they just have to grab someone off the street and give them a script to read to do the contact tracing. I can tell you from doing this training that its not that easy!


Back in July the UH out out a press release about the contact tracing training. At that time they noted that 393 professional clinicians had gone through the 1.5 hour Track 1 training and 49 people were going to complete the 6-week Track 2 training (that I am currently in) within a couple of days. So 442 people had been trained prior to our class starting. During class they have talked about the bottleneck in getting the trained people actually doing the contact tracing. A big one on Oʻahu has been having enough space at the Department of Health to provide contact tracers with enough space to physically be at least 6 feet apart while doing the work, as well as having equipment available on which to do the work. 

An unwelcome news article was about another COVID-19 related death, the 27th for the state. LG Green has said we should see this number increase in the next week or so as the disease runs its course.


Here are the daily statistics; 144 new CODI-19 cases today, another record. Since nearly all the new cases are on Oʻahu, I will now be including an enlarged 28-day case count map of Oʻahu so you can see the areas of residence for the cases.







Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mark, Sego, Hendra, & Jess!