It appears Chautauqua County’s nursing homes have not yet been touched by the coronavirus, according to Public Health Director Christine Schuyler.

During Friday’s weekly briefing in Mayville, Schuyler said she has been in communication with the local administrators of the facilities. With more than 1,700 deaths in these operations statewide, Schuyler says this community has been quite fortunate so far.

“Our nursing homes in the county have taken to heart the precautions and are working very hard to protect the health of their residents,” she said. “They do check their staff members every day. … So far, knock on wood, we have not had any COVID-19 cases of nursing home residents in the county.”

In other news, County Executive PJ Wendel said he is not in favor of a reopening date of June 1 that was recently proposed by Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. Wendel said recent developments — including a deal by U.S. Rep. Tom Reed and Quest Diagnostics for more testing — should be considered in the equation to reopen Chautauqua County much sooner.

New York state is currently on pause through May 15. “If the governor holds true to keeping us (with Erie County), I would like to see our numbers be reviewed prior to June 1. If we’re not there on the 15th, then I think we need to look at those numbers every day after that.”

Officials did acknowledge a connection between the two counties. As the county’s total rose by two to 42 — two females from the north county, one in her 50s, another in her 60s — that equates to nearly three of every four cases are in that portion of the county, which has now has 31 cases.

Erie County has been a hot spot in the state for positive cases in recent weeks. “Those who live in the north county tend to travel to Erie County more frequently … or work in Erie County,” Schuyler said.

Through Friday, there are six active cases with 1,266 negative tests. Schuyler also reported about 500 antibody tests have come back from WellNow Urgent Care. She said there has been a 3% positive rate in those tests.

Dr. Robert Berke, who also was in attendance at the meeting, did not hesitate in criticizing some of the antibody testing that is being allowed in the marketplace due to the easing of regulations by the Food and Drug Administration due to the pandemic.

“A good number of them … should not even be used,” he said, noting that some are wrongly taking advantage of consumers. He also said that many of these products are providing falsely higher numbers of positive antibodies and are “not as accurate as they should be.”

Schuyler later followed up by stating she believes the WellNow testing is “pretty accurate.”

BROOKS RELEASES VIRUS STATS

Brooks-TLC Hospital System in Dunkirk announced Friday it treated seven confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus since the first positive case was reported on March 23 in the county. The hospital also noted two of those individuals passed away from the illness.

The hospital announced that number while noting in a news release that it is reopen for elective out-patient surgeries after meeting New York state protocols for moving beyond the virus, hospital officials announced today.

As the hospital shared last week, a plan is in place to follow state Department of Health regulations around COVID-19, but also to slowly re-open the hospital for in-demand, out-patient procedures. These include colonoscopies, eye surgery and simple orthopedic, urologic, and other surgeries that don’t routinely require hospitalization.

“We realize there is pent-up demand for these services, and we want to our doctors, nurses and their staffs to again perform these elective, out-patient surgeries,” said Mary E. LaRowe, president and CEO. “Overall, it’s a good sign for our region that we’ve collectively met the state’s criteria for resuming these surgeries in the time of COVID.”

Among the Health Department rules is that a hospital have at least 30% of its standard beds, and 30% of its intensive-care unit beds, available if needed in case of any surge in inpatient admissions. The hospital must also have fewer than 10 COVID-19 inpatient admissions in a 10-day look-back period. Brooks-TLC was able to do that for the period April 17-27 and that initiated its re-opening.

Between March 16 and now, Brooks staff and administration made a series of decisions and modifications to cope with the disease’s spread. Doctors and nurses identified potential areas to care for patients should a surge occur, and they created a surge plan in the event of high-volume COVID-19 admissions. As it turned out, admissions were manageable and patient flow did not overwhelm hospital’s resources.

In conjunction with these activities, hospital leaders secured and monitored inventory of personal protective equipment; communicated with PPE vendors and others to ensure access to necessary supplies; and educated and re-trained staff on the proper use and storage of PPE.

Outwardly, the administration established more-limited access to the facility; set up a pre-screening area for everyone entering the hospital; canceled all non-emergent and non-urgent surgical cases; instituted mandatory masking for all entering our facility; and implemented a “work from home” requirement for non-clinical personnel and others as appropriate.

Finally, the hospital established processes to facilitate communication of information internally and externally, identified capability to increase COVID-19 and antibody testing, when supplies become available.