Rush County Health Officer and RMH Hospitalist Dr. Russ Daugherty discussed additional details regarding COVID-19 in Rush County during a weekly update on Wednesday.
Dr. Daugherty said Rush County has had 16 positive cases of COVID-19 and one COVID-19 related death as of Wednesday morning.
“We’ve got 15 days left for slowing the spread and so far we are doing a lot better than we were just a few weeks ago,” Dr. Daugherty said in regards to the spread of COVID-19 in Rush County. “The curves are starting to spread out and they’re starting to flatten, which means right now it looks like we’re going to stay below capacity in our state. The hard part is we have to social distance longer to keep that curve flat.”
He said the downward trend needs to be in place for another two to three weeks. At that point, if testing is readily available and hospitals aren’t overwhelmed, businesses should be able to slowly start reopening.
“What I envision seeing once we do start going back to business not quite as usual, but opening up these businesses, in order to stay safe we will need to wear face masks or face covering to keep the spread down,” Dr. Daugherty said. “I’ve seen a lot of folks wearing gloves and, unless you’re changing them after every contact, the gloves do just spread germs more. So hand washing is by far the most important thing that you can do.”
Dr. Daugherty is unsure how long it will take until businesses can reopen. He said it could take several weeks or months.
“In terms of how long we are looking at, there are certain things that are going to have to be in place that just aren’t quite there,” Dr. Daugherty said. “I know the slow the spread campaign is just two more weeks to go, but in order to sort of open these businesses up we have to have more rapid testing. We have to have safety precautions in place.”
Dr. Daugherty has been trying to look at business closings from a different standpoint.
“The way I look at it, the government is not shutting down businesses. The virus itself is,” Dr. Daugherty said. “A good example of that is what’s happening in South Dakota. There’s been no social distancing to the extent that we’ve had here and businesses are starting to shut down just from the amount of infections they are having in the businesses.”
Dr. Daugherty mentioned Rush County hasn’t had any infections in its nursing homes, despite other communities struggling to contain COVID-19 in those facilities.
“We have been very fortunate. We have very dedicated employees at the nursing homes,” Dr. Daugherty said. “They’ve been staying up a lot of hours to make sure these folks stay safe. We have kept our fingers crossed, but so far we have not had any infections in the nursing homes to any of the residents.”
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