Just after midnight tonight, at 12:01 am Thursday morning, we go in to lock down again. The new case numbers have remained in the triple digits; today is was 277, giving us a total of 7260 cases. The good news is that the curve has leveled out instead of continuing to rise but we are still in a precarious position. Our positivity rate has also gone up to 11%; which US Surgeon General Adams says puts us in the Red zone, meaning things could get real bad, real quick. The lock down should bring the new case & positivity rates down to a more manageable level; if it is successful we should see new case numbers & the number of COVID cases in the hospital begin to drop in about 2 weeks.
Last night the news reported that 7 of the largest hospitals on O'ahu were on divert. What that means is as an emergency vehicle is bringing a patient in dispatch tells them that the closest emergency room is too full and can't take the patient so they are routed to the next nearest emergency room with space. Usually they see 1 or 2 diverts, not 7. If the patient is critical they can override the divert and take them to the closest ER but then someone else's care is delayed; these are the types of scenarios we covered in our ethics training. How do you chose who to with hold care from?
The Surgeon General is also here to start up surge testing; the Feds have made 60,000 COVID-19 tests available for anyone in the next 2 weeks. In fact, he is encouraging as many people as possible to get tested whether they feel sick or not. The surge testing will help give a better picture of what the asymptomatic occurrence is. We are going to try to find a time when The Roommates & I are all available so we can get tested all at the same time. Test results will be returned in 3 or 4 days since they will be sent to labs on the continent so that tests on seriously ill people can be processed in-state in 1 or 2 days.
I am in the middle of Week 5 of the Community Contact Tracer Training. Next week Friday is the final day of the training. We anticipate we will be called up almost immediately the following week since there are 4921 active cases as of today and the department of health website claims there are 96 contact tracers on O'ahu (although that number has not been updated since August 16th). That would be about 51 cases per contact tracer; DOH says with their current technology each tracer can handle 20 cases. Even if an equal number of cases were closed today (277), that would bring the number of cases per contact tracer down only to about 48 each; which is still more than 20. Adding the 27 of us from Cohort #2 who are on O'ahu would bring the case load down to about 40 each. (Four people in Cohort #2 are on Hawai'i Island, 1 on Maui, and 2 on Kaua'i. The numbers were chosen based on populations of the counties.)
Yesterday we did "real" plays with volunteers from the school of social work faculty; the group I was in had Theresa. She was great! Although the character she was "real" playing was resistant to quarantining, Theresa said I did great letting her character know what was available to help her be successful in doing the quarantine. I feel more comfortable after doing the "real" playing; I now know a lot of what I have done before has given me tools that I can bring to contact tracing and be better than I thought I might be. (In "real" play you use things from your life to flesh out the character so your answers are consistent with your earlier responses.)
Hau'oli la Ho'omana'o kanakolu makahiki e Lorna & Darrell! A me ka Hau'oli la Ho'omana'o 'umi kumamakolu makahiki e Kyle & Valerie!
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