With the COVID-19 crisis originating in Pine Bluff, Mayor Shirley Washington has initiated a COVID-19 Task Force to help come up with solutions for the ongoing crisis.
Washington spoke about the people who are on the task force in a virtual town hall meeting Thursday evening that was held online via the Zoom app.
“We needed to connect, so we worked to create a joint task force to combat COVID-19,” said Washington. “This includes stakeholders from throughout the county and throughout the city. JRMC, Jefferson County Comprehensive Care, our first responders, our school districts – which includes also our colleges at UAPB and SeArk. We have somebody representing the county coroner’s office, the Arkansas Department of Health, the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management, the county judge, the mayor’s office. We also included the mayor of Altheimer – which is one of our larger municipalities in our small communities. State Representative Vivian Flowers, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, CASA Women’s Shelter, Neighbor to Neighbor, Jefferson County Alliance and the Chamber, our faith based community. We have representatives from funeral homes, and correctional facilities.”
Washington said one of the main goals is to make sure that organizations that need personal protective equipment (P.P.E.) are able to get the supplies they need.
“We wanted to make sure that organizations that needed P.P.E. had that P.P.E.,” said Washington. “We had a shortage in many areas, so we did an outreach to help secure P.P.E. and to help provide that to areas that needed some.”
Additionally, Jefferson Regional CEO Brian Thomas joined the town hall. Thomas stated that Jefferson Regional will have the ability to do in-house testing for the COVID-19 virus on Monday.
“I will tell you that our hospital does have a chemistry analyzer system that will perform the test. The challenge has been getting your hands on the test kits that actually run the test for the COVID virus,” said Thomas. “We’ve been allocated 460 of those swabs. We expect to get the first 60 of those in house this coming Monday, so we anticipate we will be able to do some of that in-house testing on site.”
Thomas said that once testing is done in-house the turnaround time for results reduces significantly.
“Some of that turnaround time is about an hour which will be fantastic,” said Thomas. “When you have results, particularly for the healthcare worker who may be out there on the floor exposing themselves to other patients, perhaps, or other colleagues or employees.”
Thomas said that once testing is done in-house the turnaround time for results reduces significantly.
“Some of that turnaround time is about an hour which will be fantastic,” said Thomas. “When you have results, particularly for the healthcare worker who may be out there on the floor exposing themselves to other patients, perhaps, or other colleagues or employees.”
Thomas said that Jefferson Regional has been testing around 40-50 patients a day for COVID-19 since the first positive case was found back in March.
“I think we’ve been testing somewhere close to about 40 to 50 patients a day since probably the first week this began,” said Thomas. “We do test for positive screens to make sure people don’t have flu or strep. Most people, if you get a positive flu – which flu is very active in this region right now in this part of the state – we’re getting a lot of positive flus. Typically, when you have the flu most of these patients do not have the COVID virus.”
Over the past week and a half, Thomas said that over 20 percent of the patients tested for COVID-19 in Jefferson Regional have come back as positive for the virus.
“The last week and a half we’ve been at over 20 percent positive rates for those that we’re testing,” said Thomas. “I think that number sounds high, but I don’t think it is anything to be alarmed about. I think it is actually because we are testing patients who need to be screened in a little bit higher fashion than probably early on.”
State Representative Vivian Flowers, who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus recently, spoke about some of the symptoms she experienced as she began her battle against the virus.
“There are the three symptoms that have been shared widely as to what we need to look out for – dry cough, fever, and shortness of breath,” said Flowers. “I experienced two out of three of those symptoms. I experienced a cough, and I experienced fever, but no shortness of breath.”
Flowers said there are other symptoms she displayed that haven’t been mentioned much, such as the loss of taste and smell.
“Some may have heard there are symptoms of diarrhea, and I didn’t get that, but I did get nauseous,” said Flowers. “I had body aches, and that has been common in what some people may confuse with the flu. I had a headache. That is one thing that when it started it didn’t go away. Something that I didn’t know [about] until I got it was a loss of taste and smell. That loss of taste and smell is something that happened once I was diagnosed and a couple of days into isolation. I noticed it, then it stayed that way for two or three days, then a couple of days ago I got my taste and smell back.”
Flowers said that she received a text telling her that the loss of taste and smell is being looked at by researchers and physicians as a primary symptom for the coronavirus.
“I received a text today indicating that researchers and physicians are looking at that as now possibly [being] a primary symptom and a distinguishing factor because it is not something that is consistent with some of the other virus symptoms that confuse us,” said Flowers.
