As Kosciusko County, Ind., confirmed its first case of coronavirus on Thursday, the Public Health Officer, Dr. William Remington, expressed confidence that the community is prepared to combat the virus, according to a story in he Warsaw, Ind., Times-Union. (Dr. Remington is a member of Winona Lake, Ind., Grace Brethren Church, Bruce Barlow, lead pastor.) A portion of the story appears below. Click here to read the compete article.
Local Preparedness For COVID-19 Good, But Doctor Says Virus Needs Respect
Public Health Officer Dr. William Remington likes where the community is in regards to its preparedness for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
“I’m very comfortable where we are as a community right now in preparedness. I’m very appreciative of some tough decisions in regards to pulling those heavy levers of social distancing that have already been made. That helps. This is not a fire drill today,” he said during a press conference Thursday afternoon after the Kosciusko County Health Department announced the county’s first confirmed case of COVID-19.
“Our first case came to our attention around noon today. Confirmed with solid reporting from the State Department of Health,” Remington said, noting he couldn’t disclose a lot of clinical information for the patient’s privacy. “From what we know, it’s an outpatient, not admitted. An adult. Don’t know anything about underlying diseases and do not extensively understand contact information at this point. That’s our job moving forward – trying to understand this case.”
Whether this first case represents community transmission or not will be up for discussion, he said. Community transmission means that the source of infection for the spread of an illness is unknown.
“And I think over the next couple of days, we’ll have more cases. And we’ll try to answer that question, ‘Is there community transmission?’” he said.
Click here to read the compete article.