WATCH: Huntsville, Madison County April 20 coronavirus briefing

WATCH: Huntsville, Madison County April 20 coronavirus briefing

We're interrupting regular programming >>> and we interrupt your regular programming with breaking news out of madison county.

County and city leaders are about to give another coronavirus update.

Let's listen in.

>> mr. birdwell: at this point we'll give you an update on what the current numbers in alabama aroundand madison county are.

Currently 4,492 confirmed cases in state of alabama.

200 confirmed cases in madison county resulting in 4 confirmed -- 4 confirmed deaths in madison county.

We'll continue to monitor that situation and will respond accordingly.

With that being said, we will go to mr. david spillers from huntsville hospital.

>> mr. spillers: good morning.

The good news is things continue to trend well for our area, madison county in particular.

As of this morning huntsville hospital has two covid-positive inpatients.

Crestwood has -- excuse me, huntsville hospital has seven positive covid inpatients.

Crestwood has two.

In between the two hospitals we have 13 patients that are under investigation.

Under investigation, i don't know if we've explained that term in the past, that just means they're potentially covid positive.

We're treating them as if they're covid positive but the test results have continued to come back negative.

A large majority of those never convert to a positive inpatient even though we're treating them as if they are positive.

In the region we have an additional 14 inpatients, additional 23 that are under investigation.

The area that we continue to watch and worry about are marshall county, marshall north and south are part of our health care system.

We're staying in close contact with them.

Marshall county has 152 positive cases.

Based upon the current information that we have, keep in mind marshall county has roughly 90,000 people, so that's a lot of positive cases for the population.

We have six inpatients that are positive covid.

They're all in the hospital in boaz marshall south.

Our homeless testing continues to go well.

So far we have found no homeless individuals who tested positive for covid.

We're going to continue to run sites this week to make sure we're testing everybody.

But that continues to go well and the results are very good.

To date we have tested 5,634 patients in madison county, 8,774 counties in the region.

The number of patients tested in madison county is higher than the number i gave you.

More testing options are out there to date.

When we started this.

When we started, huntsville hospital, we were doing a majority, virtually all the testing on an outpatient basis early on.

But as you're well aware, other testing options are out there now so there's more testing being done.

I will tell you that our peak day for us on march 23rd, we tested 531 people.

We're now averaging on weekdays 125 people that seek testing.

So the number of people who are looking to be tested is down substantially from where it was during our peak back in march.

Our percentage positive on those tests is coming back right now about 3.43%.

That's up just slightly from the number i gave you last week.

That's because our testing numbers are down.

To date we have discharged from inpatient, patients who are inpatient covid positive, we have diskardischarged 21 patients.

That's a good number.

Hemsi announced in an earlier meet that they had a fairly normal weekend and their supply usage was nairly normal.

That's the first time i've heard in a while it's normal, normal weekend.

I do believe testing is the primary reason that our community has spared better than the other population centers in the state.

Early testing and a lot of testing allowed us to isolate people early in the process and keep it from spreading.

The fact that we will have additional testing in the community as the economy opens back up, is very positive.

We will need to do even more testing in the future as we open businesses back up to ensure that we don't end up in a situation like some of our other communities around the state.

Another thing that i'm asked about a lot is patients on ventilators.

As of today we only have one covid positive patient in our madison county facility that's on a ventilator.

We put that in perspective with have one covid positive patient in huntsville hospital, in madison hospital, that is on a ventilator.

We actually have 55 other patients that are on ventilators for other reasons.

So it's not unusual for us to take care of ventilator patients.

We see it all the time.

We're a very large complex organization.

Our average is 50 to 55 patients on ventilators.

Today we have one covid positive patient on a ventilator.

I'll remind you once again, if you have problems, health-related problems and you think you need to come to the emergency room or to see a physician or you're having chest pain or whatever it may be, do not declay care.

We continue to see people come into the emergency department later than they probably should have.

Actually our emergency departments at the hospitals right now, all the hospitals across our region and in madison county are probably fewer people in our emergency rooms than at any point in time that i can remember.

Clearly when people aren't out and about doing things they would normally do and staying at home, we're having a whole lot less people coming into our emergency departments.

But if you need emergency care, if you need health care, please don't delay it because that can contribute to some pretty significant problem.

I'm not going to preach to you about sanitation and staying six foot apart.

We're doing a good job at that.

We need to continue to do that.

I think the question that everybody is going to start asking over the next week is what happens when we open up the economy, will it open up.

We, like everybody else, are waiting to see what the governor and state health officer decide later in the month.

I will remind you that we're still under an order to do the things we've been doing and the way we've been doing them until april 30th.

Nothing has changed.

You can't go out and open your business.

We're certainly not going out and doing elective surgeries.

We're waiting to hear what happens and what the governor and state health officer decides from the information they're gathering.

We do expect that we will be opening the economy.

From a hospital perspective, that would allow us to start seeing elective cases.

I know there are a lot of people out there that are in pain, with a procedure or delayed a procedure because they didn't want it to be done in the middle of a covid crisis.

We need to start working on that backlog of patients.

I'll also tell you that we are probably one of the safest places you could be in a crisis like this.

We know how to take care of infectious patients.

We do it all the time.

This is nothing new to us.

When we start seeing elective patients you will probably see douse some things different than we've done in the past just to be more cautious.

Primarily from the visitor standpoint and people in waiting rooms. don't be surprised if you have a loved one get an elective procedure and you drop them off and we call you when it's time to come pick them up.

Things like that.

But we're preparing for that just like everybody else.

We're anticipating sometime in early may as the rest of the state opens up, we will, too.

So we don't see an increase in the number of patients in our community.

Thank you.

>> mr. birdwell: thank you, mr. spillers.

Now we'll go to mayor tommy battle, city of huntsville.

>> mayor battle: thank you.

You know, we're all kind of looking forward to that, as mr. spillers just alluded to, that april 30th date.

The alabama department of public health order expires on april 30th.

The governor has talked about coming out with some new orders 28th, 29th, something like that with we fully expect it to start opening our businesses.

As we open those businesses, it will be a slow rollout.

It will be opening up some businesses, then opening up others, and then opening up others.

We're doing everything we can to make sure we don't have a resurge that we don't -- that we don't all the sudden start having an increase in the number of cases.

And we have to walk into this knowing, and knowing as a population that as we start to get together more, there will be more cases of covid-19.

They will come -- they will come as we get together and as people mingle together.

There's no way around it.

But we will work with our health care officials.

We will work with our hospitals.

Alabama department of public health, to make sure that we monitor this very closely so that we can keep a lid on it and make sure that we don't have a total resurgence.

You know, as we open these businesses there's not a nonessential business in the state, in my opinion.

Every business is essential.

And trying to get them back to work as we can do it as responsibly as we can do it, making sure that we take care of our people as we do that, making sure that we take care of the health concerns out there, that's the most important thing.

We as a community have done a great job at what we've done so far.

If you look at today's numbers, madison county, limestone county and morgan county, our three-county area has had 284 positive cases of covid-19.

Baldwin county and mobile county have had 786.

That's compared to our 284.

Jefferson county, shelby county have had 954 cases.

That's compared to our 284.

Chambers and lee county have had 748 cases of covid-19 compared to our 284.

The community has done a good job t community has taken this very seriously.

We have separated, we have sanitized, and we've made sure that we're ready.

The governor will be taking input from a lot of different sources.

The governor will be taking input from the lieutenant governor's small business task forth which we heard from friday.

The congressman from alabama seven district, each one has a committee that is coming out and going to come out with a plan and give that the governor with input to the governor about how to reopen businesses.

The mayor's association is talking to the governor about how to reopen business.

Professional groups, the presidential guidelines are out there.

So there's a lot of sources of information that are going to be fed in so that the governor can have a good way to open us back up.

Open us back up means a slow roll open.

We will come, we will start with certain businesses.

We will start with others.

We have particularly asked the governor as she gets started, as they make those plans and as they make those orders on how we will handle the opening of businesses, that we have a little bit of time as communities, because we have to end up doing the enforcement on this, the city of madison, madison county, and the city of huntsville have to do the enforcement on our area, plus we have to do the interpretation of the rules.

Interpretation has led to lots of questions in the past.

This one will be no different and we will be making sure that we can walk through this and walk through this well.

Personal responsibility is going to be key to us.

Every person has to be responsible for themselves.

If you want to be personally responsible, get a mask and wear a mask.

A mask is a good thing.

It keeps you from spreading disease to somebody else.

If you're in a situation where you can't control your surroundings and you go to the grocery store, you go to the drugstore or you're in a place that you know you're probably going to be within six feet of other people, wear a mask.

If you feel comfortable, wear gloves.

If we can keep people from spreading this virus, then we've achieved the goal that we need to.

I think we've got to recognize that may 2020 is going to be a tough month.

There's going to be -- as we intermingle and get back together there will be more cases of covid-19.

With more case of covid-19 there will be people who will want to shut everything all the way back down.

There will be people who are accepting of that.

So we're going to have to work through that as we go through it.

My biggest faith is in our health care system that we have locally.

That's what's gotten us here today.

Huntsville hospital, crestwood hospital, alabama department of public health have been great p partners in this in making sure we had everything that we needed and that we had the advice that we needed to do this right.

And they have done a wonderful job with it.

And david, thank you.

Thank you to the whole hospital system for the job that y'all have done.

We'll have some spikes and we'll have some times when the numbers go down.

But we will make it through this together.

And we as a community will continue to monitor this.

We will monitor it with our health care professionals who are partners in this and we will monitor to make sure that we have -- that we are safe and out in our public that we keep the numbers of cases down, but also that we have -- that we can get back to business in these unnormal times and as normal a fashion as we can.

Thank you.

>> mr. birdwell: thank you, mayor battle.

And thank you for watching today.

We will be back tomorrow at noon for another daily briefing.

Until then, critical updates will be posted to the city of huntsville's covid-19 web page as well as the websites of our other partners here today.

Until then, stay safe, stay separate, and troab remember to sanitize.

We'll take questions at this point.

Again, as you come to the mic, please identify yourself and who you're affiliated with.

And we'll allow one question and a follow up.

>> kate smith, 48 news.

My question is, ihme is predicting today is the peak for alabama.

Do y'all believe that and what are y'all anticipating?

>> mr. spillers: i think in an earlier press conference we mentioned that the national models did not appear to project the right numbers for our area.

Our own models projected something differently.

Now looking back, hindsight is always 20/20.

If you look at our numbers, we peaked a while back.

Our numbers have started to trend down.

Both in the number of cases that we are identifying in the community and the number of cases in the hospital.

I think in a peak we had maybe 15 or 16.

Now we've got 7 in madison county.

I can't remember what the peak was in the region but we've trended down.

So i think we've got our peak behind us.

Now, the question is will there be another one?

And that's one everybody keeps asking, will there be another spike when we open up the economy.

To be determined.

All depends on how we react to it.

>> and then my follow-up question is, on friday i spoke to a woman who says she was tested twice because of her job.

She says that she spoke to a huntsville hospital employee.

They called her and they said they were seeing people test positive 21 to 37 days after their initial test.

Do you believe that two or three tests are required if you test positive and do we have enough tests for people to do that before returning to work?

>> mr. spillers: yeah, i saw the report on that.

Nobody called us to ask that before the report, but -- >> i have the document.

>> mr. spillers: yeah.

So we -- it's possible.

I think all the data says that some people can test positive for a longer period of time.

I think we will continue to follow the cdc guidelines which is the assumption that most people from the time they test or the time they get the disease, about 15 days after that, they are probably cleared but as with everything there are anno mys.

Milies.some people are longer.

We haven't seen people come back 20, 30 days after that are still testing positive.

>> do we have enough tests for people to test twice if they have to?

>> mr. spillers: if there's a reason to be testing.

We're not currently testing everybody attend.

That's not the recommendations that we've got.

If those recommendations were to change from the state to the department of public health or the cdc, then we could probably accommodate that.

But that's not the current recommendation.

>> great.

Thanks.

>> hey, i'm kelley smith with whnt news 18.

My question is for may wror battle.

The lieutenant governor had recommendations last week on how and when to reopen businesses.

Wanted to ask you how and when do you think the businesses in our community should be reopened?

>> mayor battle: we are working on our own recommendations to send out to the governor.

We will do it in conjunction with the mayors of the ten largest cities in the state.

We will send out our task force has been working for about a week.

You know, i think that we are probably in line to do this, in line with alabama department of public health announcement, which, you know, the order comes to an end on april 30th.

I would like for whatever decision that is made, because we will follow the governor's and the alabama department of public health's orders.

That's how it will work.

We will follow what they want to do.

I would like to make sure when they announce it we have four or five days that we have get our police force, our community resource officers, our legal team altogether so that we can make sure that we're consistent and we can work with the city of madison and madison county to make sure that we're consistent throughout the county.

I think that we will see ourselves right around the first of may opening up.

I think we kind of talked about that several weeks ago.

I think the first of may -- mayt week of may is a good week.

But to open up does not mean that it's just a wide open.

It means that we start in a phased approach so that people, as they get out, can still stay separated and make sure that we don't spread the virus.

>> all right.

Thank you.

And my next question is for mr. spillers.

A recent harvard study said testing would need to be increased nationwide in order to safely reopen businesses and the economy.

Is huntsville hospital increasing testing and are you considering more mobile testing or some other approach to test asymptomatic people as the economy reopens?

>> mr. spillers: yes.

We're constantly increasing our ability to test.

We've ordered a third machine to do in-house testing.

Right now there's still a limitation on the testing supplies that you need.

So until there's an unlimited supply we can't test everybody.

And i understand all the reports talk about how important testing is.

We've been able to do a lot of testing in our area but we couldn't test everybody if everybody needed testing.

So i agree with their report.

I think we're going to need more testing.

I think we're going to have at some point probably test people who aren't symptomatic and do more widespread a testing.

Antibody testing is still to be determined how -- if those are accurate and if they are, you know, how long the antibody stays in the body before it's no longer actually doing what it needs to do.

So i think there's still -- i tr the next two or three weeks you're going to see a lot more information come out on testing, more testing availability available.

And there will be people testing in our community besides us.

Don't be surprised if the cvss and the walgreens and others start testing in their stores.

Which is great.

The more testing the better.

But i don't think right now there's enough out there to test everybody who wants to be tested.

Just a supply shortage.

>> sydney martin with channel 31.

Mr. spillers you talked about there's a limit in supply right now of testing.

So any idea when that's going to change and when maybe rapid testing might increase and do you think maybe we are -- we should reopen before we can do more testing or should that wait before we reopen the state?

>> mr. spillers: there's a lot of questions in that question.

So, you know, i don't know when we're going to have a totally adequate supply of testing supplies in order to test people for covid.

Clearly if we're going to test 350 million people, that's a lot of supplies and we're nowhere close to having that kind of testing.

And then the question is, if you test somebody today and they're negative and they could convert three days later to positive are you going to test everybody every week because then that 350 million gets multiplied by 52 weeks a year.

We're nowhere close to that kind of testing.

So i think we're going to have to depend on the experts from the cdc and others to tell us what's appropriate testing and how much is enough.

And that will include how we utilize antibody testing, rapid testing, and all those other types of things that will be made available to us over time.

The question about do we have enough testing to open up, i don't get to make that decision, whether we have enough testing to open up or not.

Somebody else will make the decision about whether we open up the economy and then we'll try do our best to manage the situation when that happens.

I believe, like the mayor, that we will probably have a spike in cases when we open up the economy.

I believe it will be because people will not continue to follow the recommendations that we've made, wear masks and do some of those things.

Inevitably, people are going to let their guard down, have a party, go to the lake and get in a boat to the and not have a mask on and we're going to get a spike in cases.

It's just going to happen.

I think we will use our testing wisely until there's unlimited tests available and i have no idea when unlimited tests will be available.

>> i know you said reopening isn't really in your purview.

But does it concern you since you do run a hospital if we do have that spike, that we may be reopening too quickly?

And mayor battle, if you will answer that, too, after mr. spillers?

>> mr. spillers: i'm concerned that we have a spike and i would be very concerned if we ever got in a situation like new york.

I'm concerned about marshall county right now just when you look at the number of cases relative to their population and those were converted to inpatient, our hospital there's will fill up quickly and we'll have to take care of some of those patients here by get paid to be concerned.

And i am concerned about it.

We'll watch it.

We'll manage it.

I said two weeks ago i'd rather open up two weeks late than two weeks early.

That's just my opinion because i'm oh our organizations the one that's got to deal with the people who ultimately end up the sickest with this disease.

So i probably am a little more conservative at the most about when we open up.

>> mayor battle: i think i'll follow up, i think we're all concerned.

We're concerned about the spread of the virus.

We're also concerned about our economy.

We have a number of people in madison county, huntsville, madison who aren't working right now because they can't work, because the business is not there.

It's a very fine line to run.

You have to make sure that your economy moves forward but you also have to make sure that you're safe.

So we're on a fine line right now.

We are working that fine line to try to daily make twists and changes in how we're doing things to make sure that we do it safely.

But we also get back to business at some point, too.

What we're looking at right now is maybe 10 to 14 d days from now actually having the first phase of opening up.

And we're all kind of guessing at what that phase is looking like.

But if it's done responsibly, i think that we're right on target, where we need to be for opening businesses in a conservative fashion.

And then over a four-week period, reopening most of your businesses.

Some of your businesses may never get back to the same place that we are today, that we were four weeks ago.

But i can tell you that when we get toes those business necessary operation, we're going to get those as safely as we can.

>> mr. birdwell: at this point we'll conclude this press conference.

Thank you for coming.

>> pat simon: another wrap of madison county officials to include hospital officials as well.

In fact, to lead off huntsville hospital ceo david spillers telling us the current numbers of cases is trending well, if his opinion me says there are models preprojected that we peaked in cases a while back and have since been trending down but that could spike.

Something that he and the mayor said that they were concerned about and rightfully so.

He said that on peak day, by the way, of testing, march 23rd, 531.

Now just averaging 120 now.

Substantially down.

Homeless testing is going well.

He said so far there are no positive cases in the homeless community.

He also said they're seeing fewer people in the emergency rooms than he can remember.

But if you need emergency health care, seek it out.

The big question according to spillers now is what happens when and how the governor will open up the economy.

He says that they are taking a wait and see approach.

But we will have to continue to observe social distancing practices.

Mayor tommy battle says we are looking forward to the april 30th date, where that stay at home order is set to expire.

He says we are expecting something to be announced by governor ivey and the state health department that could come around april 28th, next week.

Mayor battle also expects business toes open and he says that it's going to be done kind of in a rollout way.

He called it a wave, a time back.

He expects that first phase he just said of that to happen 10 to 14 days.

The first phase of the rollout.

And he says when governor ivey makes that announcement to reopen, that local government is given another five days at least to get law enforcement and other entities ready for a reopening in a phased approach to avoid spreading of the virus.

And to help lower the spread, the mayor urges everyone to wear a mask, especially if you're in area where's you will be in contact with others.

But he says still expect some spikes to take place.

He concerned about that.

After alabama begins to reopen and people get back to business.

He said every business is essential and they will be looking at ways to make sure that it's safely done, you know w the reopening and that the number one priority is when they're gradually reopening business toes do it as es to do it assafe as possible.

Preparations are being made to reopen alabama.

In the meantime for 24/7 coverage you can count on head over to waaytv.com.

See you back here at 4:00.