Bowen Center Health Clinic Begins COVID Testing
October 15, 2020 at 3:15 a.m.
Bowen Center Health Clinic Begins COVID Testing
By David [email protected]
Kurt Carlson, Bowen Center CEO, made the announcement Wednesday during the biweekly press conference on the coronavirus pandemic at Warsaw City Hall.
He said on Tuesday, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer got a call from the Kosciusko County Health Department about the number of cases and the need for more testing. Thallemer called the governor’s office, which got a hold of Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box, who got in touch with KCHD Administrator Bob Weaver and told Weaver that on Wednesday Bowen Center would receive a pallette of testing material. Before the press conference Wednesday, Carlson received a call from the driver who was on the way to deliver two pallettes by 11:30 a.m.
Carlson said a trainer from South Bend was being sent to provide Bowen Center’s IT team with training on the computer system that the state was providing. The staff that will be administering the procedures also was to be trained Wednesday.
“I’m so pleased and thankful to Ivy Tech, Allyn Decker, who connected us to one of their nurse trainers and she had – even though they’re in the middle of academic testing right now of the students – she had a window of time ... to get staff trained in the actual procedure,” he said.
He also thanked MedStat and their administration, along with KCHD Public Health Officer Dr. William Remington, for allowing Bowen Center’s health clinic staff to watch the MedStat testing site in action.
Carlson said he was thankful for the Bowen Center employees who volunteered to staff the clinic for the next two weeks until the full-time employees come on to work the test site.
Carlson said they are hoping to be up and running with the COVID testing today, pending on the training. Signage is forthcoming, and the staff for the testing site is bilingual and bicultural.
After Thallemer thanked a number of people for getting the permanent testing site rolling, he reiterated that CARES Act-funded testing at the three MedStat locations and Parkview Warsaw will continue as the Bowen clinic gets up and running. If Bowen’s testing site is up and running on Dubois Road today as hoped, that will give Kosciusko County three testing sites where CARES Act funding will pay for the testing if a person doesn’t have health insurance.
Carlson said at this point, the Bowen health clinic does not require people to make appointments for COVID testing, but that is subject to change depending on how things go.
Testing will not be done on Sundays and Mondays. It will be available every Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and Tuesday through Friday, starting at 10 or 11 a.m. until 6 or 7 p.m. Testing will be done there through at least June 2021, Carlson said. Testing will be available for children 2 years old and up.
“All of this is very timely,” Remington said. “Regionally, we are seeing the heaviest presence of COVID yet, which is very disappointing.”
He said St. Joe, Elkhart and Kosciusko counties, along with the Muncie and Evansville regions, “particularly are heavy right now” and “it’s filling up healthcare settings again. So we need the community’s help. We need people to wear a mask when indoors. We need people to rethink congregated indoor gatherings. We need people to socially distance when they can. Be careful with great family events – weddings, funerals, parties – these are spreading events for us.”
He said there is no vaccine yet, but hopefully that will come before too long.
“If we take a step back from our region, the state is showing a bump up. It’s not disasterous. It’s nowhere near where it was in April. Nationwide, the same thing,” Remington said. “... But regionally, this county is seeing just an inordinate pressure from this virus now, which is a disappointment. So we just need to hang in there. This will ebb and flow, I think, for a while now and we’re certainly having a heavy presence now, but it eventually will settle down again.”
The good news, he said, was that thanks to a lot of work with the county schools, “thus far, our honest opinion is that schools are not the incubator they were contemplated maybe to be.” Unlike influenza, which can incubate in schools, Remington said COVID really hasn’t seemed to come out strongly in schools yet. “So I don’t think we need to close schools, unless there’s an administrative burden such that, for whatever reason, that school has to close.”
As the health officer, he said he doesn’t see a need to close schools and have them go online.
“So the schools reflect community spread. The community is not reflecting a school incubator, I must stress that point. So in the schools they are dealing with families, kids, students, faculty, staff that are taken out by a quarantine directive. Not ill, but they were close contact,” Remington said.
He said the county, under his directive, is following the latest guidance from the Indiana State Department of Health, which largely is reflecting the best thinking from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention applied to Indiana.
KCHD Communicable Disease Nurse Teresa Reed provided an updated school report. She said county schools are doing relatively well, though they may not always feel like it.
As of Tuesday, she said there have been 499 individuals who were quarantined through the KCHD for schools. There haven’t been super-spreader events in the schools, though there have been large quarantine events where one person had a lot of contact with a lot of people.
“Most of our cases involving schools right now are things happening outside of schools. Again, socially, weddings, parties, parties, parties, social events. Right now, it is a time where I would ask people to look at a situation and make a choice. If you get COVID, you may not be seriously ill, but the numbers in our community need for people to take more precautions than they may need personally to help dampen this in our community right now,” Reed said.
Of the 63 positive COVID-19 cases in Kosciusko County in the two months that schools have reopened, including students who are 5 to 18 years old and school employees, she said 16 so far have been asymptomatic; 36, very mild; five, mild; two, moderate; no severe; and for four it’s unknown or too early to tell.
The next press conference is at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 28.
Kurt Carlson, Bowen Center CEO, made the announcement Wednesday during the biweekly press conference on the coronavirus pandemic at Warsaw City Hall.
He said on Tuesday, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer got a call from the Kosciusko County Health Department about the number of cases and the need for more testing. Thallemer called the governor’s office, which got a hold of Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box, who got in touch with KCHD Administrator Bob Weaver and told Weaver that on Wednesday Bowen Center would receive a pallette of testing material. Before the press conference Wednesday, Carlson received a call from the driver who was on the way to deliver two pallettes by 11:30 a.m.
Carlson said a trainer from South Bend was being sent to provide Bowen Center’s IT team with training on the computer system that the state was providing. The staff that will be administering the procedures also was to be trained Wednesday.
“I’m so pleased and thankful to Ivy Tech, Allyn Decker, who connected us to one of their nurse trainers and she had – even though they’re in the middle of academic testing right now of the students – she had a window of time ... to get staff trained in the actual procedure,” he said.
He also thanked MedStat and their administration, along with KCHD Public Health Officer Dr. William Remington, for allowing Bowen Center’s health clinic staff to watch the MedStat testing site in action.
Carlson said he was thankful for the Bowen Center employees who volunteered to staff the clinic for the next two weeks until the full-time employees come on to work the test site.
Carlson said they are hoping to be up and running with the COVID testing today, pending on the training. Signage is forthcoming, and the staff for the testing site is bilingual and bicultural.
After Thallemer thanked a number of people for getting the permanent testing site rolling, he reiterated that CARES Act-funded testing at the three MedStat locations and Parkview Warsaw will continue as the Bowen clinic gets up and running. If Bowen’s testing site is up and running on Dubois Road today as hoped, that will give Kosciusko County three testing sites where CARES Act funding will pay for the testing if a person doesn’t have health insurance.
Carlson said at this point, the Bowen health clinic does not require people to make appointments for COVID testing, but that is subject to change depending on how things go.
Testing will not be done on Sundays and Mondays. It will be available every Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and Tuesday through Friday, starting at 10 or 11 a.m. until 6 or 7 p.m. Testing will be done there through at least June 2021, Carlson said. Testing will be available for children 2 years old and up.
“All of this is very timely,” Remington said. “Regionally, we are seeing the heaviest presence of COVID yet, which is very disappointing.”
He said St. Joe, Elkhart and Kosciusko counties, along with the Muncie and Evansville regions, “particularly are heavy right now” and “it’s filling up healthcare settings again. So we need the community’s help. We need people to wear a mask when indoors. We need people to rethink congregated indoor gatherings. We need people to socially distance when they can. Be careful with great family events – weddings, funerals, parties – these are spreading events for us.”
He said there is no vaccine yet, but hopefully that will come before too long.
“If we take a step back from our region, the state is showing a bump up. It’s not disasterous. It’s nowhere near where it was in April. Nationwide, the same thing,” Remington said. “... But regionally, this county is seeing just an inordinate pressure from this virus now, which is a disappointment. So we just need to hang in there. This will ebb and flow, I think, for a while now and we’re certainly having a heavy presence now, but it eventually will settle down again.”
The good news, he said, was that thanks to a lot of work with the county schools, “thus far, our honest opinion is that schools are not the incubator they were contemplated maybe to be.” Unlike influenza, which can incubate in schools, Remington said COVID really hasn’t seemed to come out strongly in schools yet. “So I don’t think we need to close schools, unless there’s an administrative burden such that, for whatever reason, that school has to close.”
As the health officer, he said he doesn’t see a need to close schools and have them go online.
“So the schools reflect community spread. The community is not reflecting a school incubator, I must stress that point. So in the schools they are dealing with families, kids, students, faculty, staff that are taken out by a quarantine directive. Not ill, but they were close contact,” Remington said.
He said the county, under his directive, is following the latest guidance from the Indiana State Department of Health, which largely is reflecting the best thinking from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention applied to Indiana.
KCHD Communicable Disease Nurse Teresa Reed provided an updated school report. She said county schools are doing relatively well, though they may not always feel like it.
As of Tuesday, she said there have been 499 individuals who were quarantined through the KCHD for schools. There haven’t been super-spreader events in the schools, though there have been large quarantine events where one person had a lot of contact with a lot of people.
“Most of our cases involving schools right now are things happening outside of schools. Again, socially, weddings, parties, parties, parties, social events. Right now, it is a time where I would ask people to look at a situation and make a choice. If you get COVID, you may not be seriously ill, but the numbers in our community need for people to take more precautions than they may need personally to help dampen this in our community right now,” Reed said.
Of the 63 positive COVID-19 cases in Kosciusko County in the two months that schools have reopened, including students who are 5 to 18 years old and school employees, she said 16 so far have been asymptomatic; 36, very mild; five, mild; two, moderate; no severe; and for four it’s unknown or too early to tell.
The next press conference is at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 28.
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092