10 coronavirus inpatients at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield

10 coronavirus inpatients at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield

Birdwell: good afternoon: ?

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>> we interrupt your programming for the update out of madison county this afternoon.

>> let's listen in.

>> mr. birdwell: our community response to covid-19.

Our speakers today will be david spillers from huntsville hospital and mayor tommy battle from the city of huntsville.

You'll note we're sitting at least six feet apart according to cdc guidelines as well as our best practices to separate and sanitize.

At this point i'll give you the current numbers.

There are 15,718 confirmed cases in the state of alabama.

310 confirmed cases in madison county resulting in four confirmed deaths in madison county.

We continue to monitor this and respond accordingly.

So at this point we will go to mr. david spillers from huntsville hospital.

>> mr. spillers: thank you, sir.

Good morning, everyone.

You know, madison county continues to be an anomaly in the state.

We have nine in-patients in our hospital today.

Talked to my colleagues that are in tuscaloosa, montgomery and mobile where they have numerous in-patients and communities full of positive patients.

I strongly encourage our community to continue doing whatever it is you're doing to keep the numbers low.

It certainly makes our lives easier.

We continued to test a lot of people systemwide over 16,000 tests have been performed by our system.

There is probably an equal number in tests performed in alabama by other testing organizations.

Our percentage of positives continue to remain low out of that number.

We have about 3.14% of the madison county people that we tested have come back positive.

About 2.87% in the region.

Both numbers are lower than you'll see on the state dashboard.

I can't tell you why there is a difference between our numbers in the state.

I only know that our numbers we're very comfortable with, when you do all the testing and keep those on the same computer system and track it the way we do.

We're very comfortable with the numbers that i'm presenting to you relative to the tests that we performed.

Coming off the holiday weekend, we did a lot of tests yesterday.

Well over 300 tests here in madison county.

We can probably talk more about that later.

Probably a combination of being a little over two weeks out from the time we opened the economy up.

Also probably some pent up demand over the weekend.

Statewide the numbers of positive cases remains high.

Yesterday was a significant number for the state.

I think there were over 650 positive cases statewide.

Probably one of the -- if not the largest one of the -- larger days we had since we started this.

Again, i hope we'll continue to be the anomaly in the state and numbers will stay low.

Around us, where we have some system hospitals, frankly county and the shoals area continues to see a large increase in numbers.

The shoals area and -- culver, lauderdale and franklin has a large number of positives.

They have about 786 cases in those three counties and our hospital, helen keller, actually has more in-patients than in huntsville.

They have ten confirmed there and they have been running 10 to 12 for the past week to 10 days in that area.

Marshall county, 660 plus cases in marshall county but we don't have a single in-patient in our facilities in marshall county.

Even though they got a large number of positive cases, they're not converted to in-patients.

I can't explain that to you.

I don't know why that is.

We did have at one point six or eight in-patients in the hospitals down there, but right now they have zero patients in the hospitals that are covid positive.

We believe testing is important.

We have now done over 20 remote test sites, test clinics where we have taken our mobile medical unit and teams out into the community to test.

That continues to be popular.

We'll continue to do that, try to do one or two a week in various locations to take testing out to the community.

The other thing we talked about in here is asymptomatic testing.

We have now done close to 1,000 asymptomatic patients -- tested them and had one test positive.

So clearly not the best use of testing.

Any time you have a limited resource, you want to make sure you're focusing on the area of need and for somebody who just wants to be tested for the sake of being tested, that's probably not a good use of that resource.

Usually when people see what it requires to get a test, many people will say maybe i'll wait until later.

It's not a pleasant test to have performed on you.

So we are finding a better use for asymptomatic testing.

Other businesses called us and said we had an employee test positive, can we get our employees in and get them tested.

We think that's a smart thing to do.

Isolate the person who is positive and find out if anybody else is positive and get them isolated and continue to watch the people who work closely with the people that tested positive.

We're going to continue to do that and provide support to the community for businesses when they ask.

We had at least three -- two or three businesses yesterday call us yesterday and say we have somebody who is positive, can you test our employees.

We're doing that.

We talked about antibody testing in here.

Unless you're going to give everybody an antibody test to get statistical information, i'm not sure what you do but there is a demand for antibody testing.

We have a very reliable antibody test that we run on our machine at the hospital and we decided to make that available.

The physician office uses our lab so if you see a physician and a physician wants to order antibody testing, we can do that and get the results back fairly quickly.

Since it's all run in house, generally it's the same day result back to the physician office.

The physician would need to consult with the patient on that test just like any other test they run on the patient.

Let the physician and patient discuss what that means and how they go about their life if it's positive or negative.

Statistically speaking that's where the numbers will be.

If you want that testing and you see a physician and the physician orders it, it's available in our lab.

If you're curious.

Everything else in the hospital is busy.

We opened back up.

We started doing electives.

Our elective schedules are almost full.

We're not quite as efficient as we were prior to covid because our process, the things we do slow us down a little bit.

Primarily the waiting and patients being brought in and not in waiting rooms but coming in from cars when it's time for procedures.

So the whole process slows us down.

To accommodate that we're doing more procedures on saturday.

Far busier schedules on saturday than we did pre-covid.

Tried to get people in and get the elective procedures performed.

Since this is back up to a seasonal -- about where we should be this time of the year but i do strongly continue to encourage people that if you a healthcare issue, don't avoid a hospital or emergency department because you're afraid of covid.

You're probably going to be more likely to catch it somewhere in the community than a hospital.

Because many of the covid patients or the patients who think they're covid positive are going through the flu and fever clinic.

We don't have many showing up in the emergency department.

You don't have to worry about being in a waiting room and catching covid.

We're trying to limit the people -- trying to limit the people in the waiting room and emergency department just like everywhere else.

I think the future of a lot of things is you wait in your car until you're called until this crisis is over and we have a vaccine, which is somewhere too far out for me to predict.

With that, that's all i have until we have some questions.

Thank you.

>> mr. birdwell: thank you.

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

Madison today is may 27.

Three months ago on february 27 we had our first -- >> mayor battle: first press conference to talk about covid-19 and back then we were calling it coronavirus even.

As we went through that, we started three months ago working in partnership with huntsville hospital, david spillers has been on our daily call for the past three months.

Pam hudson from crestwood has been on the daily call for the past three months.

Either judy smith or dr. landers have been on the past three months.

With ema who has been on the call each and every day and each of the three local governments have been in there plus redstone arsenal and it's been a team effort.

A lot of people ask why madison county has done better than the regs of the state or the rest of the big ten communities and as we watched it, we have been able to do it because of community effort.

And the effort that has been put forward.

We have really seen the value of a public hospital here, having a public hospital means you can spend money on things that private hospitals that are there for profit can not.

We can spend it on flu and fever clinics.

We can spend it on taking buses out to underserved areas to make sure they -- each of them are able to be tested.

As we do that, we have been able to come up with a plan and strategy that made our community a success.

310 cases yesterday.

We were up 8 from the day before.

We're seeing just a little bit of a rise.

We knew we're have some surge out of this as people came back together.

This is the 14-day anniversary of the first opening and opening of retail centers today -- this past monday we opened up restaurants.

I think it's a very slow ramp-up as we're opening up restaurants and people are being very careful about getting out.

This weekend, as i was out, i want to say congratulations to the people of huntsville/madison county because a lot of people were wearing masks and staying separated.

Using good hygiene.

Washing your hands.

Doing what we have done for the past three months made us a success.

We have to continue to do that and we'll find our community will be one of the most successful communities moving through the pandemic and coming out of this pandemic.

Still is there an end in sight?

I think mr. spillers just told you that the end is not totally in sight.

We'll have an economy and walk the fine line of opening the economy and making sure our public is safe.

What we're seeing so far is it's working.

The plan is working and we'll continue to work that plan.

To each of the people out there who are out there taking this seriously, wearing masks, staying separated, doing all the things we have asked you to do, thank you for your cooperation.

Thank you for working with us.

There will always be hot spots.

We still get calls on those and have calls pretty regularly but the hot spots are places that we need to pay attention to.

We'll pay attention and work on them and try to make sure that everybody follows the same rules.

To our team partners, this has shown what makes huntsville/madison county, city of madison special.

We work together in partnerships, and working together in the partnership, we made it a success for our area.

Thank you.

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

Thank you for watching today.

We will be back here again on friday, may 29, 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 remember to sanitize.

At this point we'll take questions.

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.

I wanted to clarify with mr. spillers.

Huntsville hospital is not going to allow anyone to come now to get tested for coronavirus?

>> mr. spillers: no.

We are continuing to test asymptomatic patients.

We have done those at the flu and fever clinic.

We prefer that those tests be reserved for people who have some reason to be tested.

So you're asymptomatic but your friend has covid and you want to be tested as opposed to there are people who just want to get tested.

We prefer that people use some logic behind why they choose to get tested and we're making those available there.

We will test a lot of asymptomatic people here in the next few weeks.

I expect from businesses that find somebody positive and we have to -- we help test those other employees to make sure it's not rampant in those organizations.

>> great.

And then my follow-up question is, last week there was a lot of talk about montgomery and birmingham filling up icu beds.

Is there a chance if montgomery is sending people to birmingham that birmingham could send people to madison county?

>> mr. spillers: this goes on in the middle of the winter and flu season in our state.

Huntsville and uab tend to take patients from all over the state.

Uab more so than huntsville but when uab fills up, we start getting patients from other parts of the state.

That's a role we serve.

It could -- i could see a point where more patients are shipped from montgomery.

What happens is they usually get shipped to birmingham and then birmingham north patients get shipped here because birmingham is full.

Although we had patients from as far away as bolling county for trauma and sick patients.

We deal with this all the time.

It sounds like a crisis.

In the winter the icu beds are generally full when we have a bad flu.

It's fairly unusual to be full this time of year.

But i think unless the numbers just start doubling and tripling from where we are today, i think as a state we'll be okay and distribute the patients as needed.

As i mentioned, some of the patients are not from madison county and have been transferred from smaller facilities.

That's just the way the healthcare system works.

>> great.

Tha thanks.

>> brian lawson, whnt for mr. spillers.

You talked about workplaces opening up and having an employee test positive and a program to follow in that or getting requests along those lines.

Can you talk about what that would look like, how you're handling that?

Are you going to sites, are they coming to you?

How do you see that expanding?

>> mr. spillers: so the way it works to this point, if an employee tests positive, the company calls us and we generally set them up to come to the fever and flu clinic.

They usually give a list of employees who have been in close contact and we check off the list.

If somebody doesn't show up, we call the employer and say this person didn't show up for the test.

We run the test and if any are positive, we'll go through the process with alabama department of health and quarantine those patients and track the ones who came back negative, if they get any symptoms, we'd bring them back in for testing.

>> thank you.

For mayor battle and mr. spillers, as you had the coordinated calls that you're on talking to your peers around the state, i wonder -- we're seeing case numbers that are substantial relative to where they were say a month ago.

Wonder what you're hearing and what you're able to piece together about the profile of those cases, if any pattern is emerging.

If you have a picture or any visibility into that that we may better understand what we're seeing out there.

>> mayor battle: go ahead.

They got the cameras already on you.

>> mr. spillers: you're talking about the patients admitted to the hospitals?

>> we're seeing meaningful spikes in positive cases relative to where we were.

I'm wondering is that for church services?

Is that a wave of nursing homes?

Is that just we have more tests in more areas?

I wonder what you can tell or what people are talking about relative to those figures?

>> mr. spillers: so on the calls that i listen into and other parts of the state, we're not seeing any big pockets of positives here in madison county.

We saw some positives that were in industries and marshall county that created a spike.

We saw the same thing in franklin county.

We may have a little bit going on in morgan county.

They have seen significant increases that are employer-work based.

In other parts of the state they're seeing nursing homes and long-term care facilities and it seems when an employee or someone in a long-term care facility or nursing home is positive, it tends to reproduce quickly and create a problem.

We have been able to avoid that.

So we try to track back every patient that's positive and that's what the alabama department of public health does, to see if there is a center of activity that we need to focus on.

We haven't seen a lot of that in madison county.

That's why testing for the organizations where a restaurant has an employee, they're generally shutting down and doing sanitation and checking employers really well to make sure it doesn't create a problem like we had in some other counties.

As far as a pattern on translation of who ends up in the hospital, again, that's the big worry about this.

Will it over burden the hospital and will a lot of people become in-patients?

The only pattern that i see there, and i get the data every day on the patients admitted to the hospital or still in the hospital is most patients have many other conditions.

It's still very rare to get a healthy individual that comes in and is really sick.

It happens.

Age groups vary widely because we have people in the community that are 45 and 50 that have a lot of other health problems. and it just tends to be harder on the body if you already have pre-existing conditions and those are tuns who generally -- the ones who generally end up in the hospital.

>> mayor battle: i think we have to look at the same thing.

800 additional cases in the state of alabama.

700 the day before.

800 the day before that.

Those are significant increases but i think what we're seeing is the hospital system is not being overrun.

Mr. birdwell was on the call with some counterparts in montgomery and throughout the state.

They felt like they were very achievable to be able to take care of those patients as they came through.

All the tools got to be used.

You have to have your contact tracing.

You need to make sure you have more tests, you'll have more positives come out.

As you go through the whole scenario of the disease, you'll find a lot of things will pop up more positives.

I think right now we're doing a lot more testing than we have ever done.

This last week we did a lot of testing here.

We did a -- as mr. spillers mentioned, a significant number of testing yesterday.

Those will show you the numbers of real positives that are sitting out there.

We're still, you know, still very fortunate.

We're still running 3% of everybody being tested are those that are coming out positive, so it's going to -- we'll have to continue to do what we have been doing and we're there to help the state if the sate needs the help.

>> thank you -- if the state needs the help.

>> thank you.

>> megan raina with waay 31 news.

This is for you, mr. spillers.

You mentioned antibody testing being available through the hospital.

The cdc's recommendation is that 50% of the tests could be false negative.

Is there a concern behind the type of testing you're using?

>> mr. spillers: no.

We use a test by addit.

The specificity is 99.81.

The sensitivity on the test, zero to 6 days after a pcr test is 65% between 7 and 13 days after a confirmed positive it's 88% and after 14 days it's 100%.

Very reliable test.

What you do with that test, if it comes back positive, you need to discuss with your doctor.

It doesn't mean you're superman and super woman and you're imag and you can do all these things.

You could be covid positive when you get the antibody test and there are a number of factors that need to be discussed with your physician when they get the test.

Some people have very low sensitivity and specificity and doesn't did -- do much good.

>> do you see an increase in people wanting the test?

Are you expecting more now that, you know, there is -- we're coming out of the holiday weekend?

People -- now that it's more available?

>> mr. spillers: antibody or pcr?

>> antibody.

>> mr. spillers: over this entire three-month period, a lot of people say i was sick in january and february and think i had it.

I want to check if i have anticipate bodies.

I think there -- antibodies.

I think there was a curiosity about that for a long period of time until we had a test that was reliable and a methodology where there was a process to get the test and there was a discussion with the physician that we wouldn't make it available so we did make it available because of consumer demand.

Now how many people will actually go have blood drawn to get a test out of you're -- out of curiosity, i don't know.

They'll have to make an appointment with a doctor and get it ordered.

It's not as easy as going to the drugstore and getting it.

So if you want one, you'll have to work to get one.

>> thank you.

>> mr. spillers, i wanted to follow up about marshall county and no in-patients.

What do you attribute to tamping down what was one of the early hot spots in the state to where, i guess, i don't know if it's the right word to use but things being under control at this moment.

>> mr. spillers: well, you know, anything i tell you would be speculation or maybe a little educated guess.

But when the numbers started going up, the alabama department of health and the county and other organizations where they had outbreaks tried very quickly to address it and get everybody tested and change their processes and procedures and so forth and so on.

So i think there was a lot of work done in that community to try to mitigate the problem.

And then i think the numbers have leveled off.

I don't think they're growing nearly as fast.

The question as to why many of those didn't translate into in-patients, i can't answer.

I don't know.

I wish i did know.

Somebody is going to study that at some point in time and say, for this reason whether it be a different strain or whatever, these people didn't get as sick and didn't translate to in-patients.

Seems like every 30 or 40 days we learn something new about this -- about covid-19.

And i'm sure hindsight is always 2020.

Six months from now we'll know more and that might be something for people to study, about why have that many cases and not many admissions out of the cases.

>> just a follow-up on that.

I think you probably already answered the question.

I wondered if maybe a playbook or a strategy had emerged that could be applied elsewhere in hot spots.

>> mr. spillers: i think that the -- around the state people are learning every day when they have a hot spot the things to do.

Alabama department of health sees it all because they're all over the state.

I think they help -- if called in, they'll help people put prases and procedures in place -- processes and procedures in place.

We're learning every day to keep from transmitting this.

How to work and keep people around you from getting it but there is no perfect system.

There is no way to keep people from getting this unless you isolate people at home and stay inside.

We have a pandemic fatigue in our community.

People are not willing to do what they were doing 30 days ago.

So yeah.

I think we learned a lot more.

I was shocked at the news out of the cdc that maybe this is not as contagious on surfaces as they might have originally thought.

That said, i still see people cleaning a lot.

That's good.

I think why not be safe as opposed to just say, well, we're not going to do that anymore ask, you know, that's -- i've been a promoter of masks even though the evidence is iffy, but, you know, just a logical person says if we're talking and we both have on masks you're less likely to spit on me and i'm less likely to get it so why not take the precaution?

We'll learn more and more as time goes on.

>> very good.

Thank you.

>> mayor battle: let me say this.

I think the alabama department of public health gets a lot of credit.

There is a lady there, judy smith, on the calls every day.

Excitable lady.

She has a hot spot and jumps on it with both feet and wrestles it to the ground and works with mr. spillers and the huntsville hospital system because they're in just about all 12 counties that she has been working with.

They have a lot of -- you can tell they have a lot of off conference calls with each other talking about what is happening in different areas.

And the attention they're playing to it in the early days when it first kicks up and comes out.

That's kind of the key to it.

If you get ahead of it, whatever you do today will affect you 14 days from now.

You've got to get ahead.

So we have been through three months so six cycles of 14 days and every time she has seen a hot spot, she and the alabama department of public health and huntsville hospital have been jumping on it with both feet and doing it early.

By doing it early, i think it makes a big deference for us and makes those hot spots kind of flatten the curve on them as we go through.

>> mr. birdwell: