DELAWARE, Oh. – The Delaware General Health District announced today the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in a Delaware County resident.
- This individual attended the Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine (CORD) in New York City from March 7 to March 11. CORD organizers report close to 1,300 people attended the conference
- This individual is in their 50s
- This individual was never hospitalized but rather recovering in isolation at home upon their return to Ohio
- Close contacts of this individual have been advised to self-quarantine at home and monitor for any symptoms
- The Health District will not be releasing any additional demographic information relating to this new case to protect the privacy of the individual during this time of illness
- The Health District Disease Control and Response Unit will contact anyone who needs to know or take action, including the need for isolation or quarantine
- Our Disease control and response team are following the guidelines they always do with any infectious disease. Our staff have prepared for a pandemic such as this
- They are regularly communicating with ODH as well as our other public health partners in the county to work as efficiently as possible to handle this case and their close contacts
- It is expected as this disease will continue to spread. If we can limit the community’s exposure to this disease, as difficult as it may be, we can make a tremendous impact on reducing the number of cases and lives lost
- Our healthcare system will not be able to handle the large number of sick patients, as we’ve seen in the other impacted countries if we do not implement these strategies.
- These strategies include: practicing social distancing of 3-6 feet, staying home if you are sick, washing your hands and sanitizing often, covering your coughs and sneezes
- The Health District does not provide sick care, treatment, or testing for COVID-19. If you are sick, contact your primary care provider, your regular doctor, by phone to discuss your symptoms
- We have opened at COVID Call Center for general questions. It will be opened from 7am to 7:30 pm Monday through Friday. You can reach that center at 740-368-1700 and dial 1 to connect
- In addition, you can contact the Ohio Department of Health Call Center for general questions by calling 1-833-4-ASK-ODH, They are open 7 days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
- This is the only communication we are releasing at this time due to the time limitations on our staff. Additional information will be communicated through our social media platforms as well as our newsletter as it becomes available
Last Updated on March 19, 2020
Article from the New York Times 03/23/20 explains what South Korea did, in part, to reverse the tide of infection.
Lesson 3: Contact Tracing, Isolation and Surveillance
When someone tests positive, health workers retrace the patient’s recent movements to find, test — and, if necessary, isolate — anyone the person may have had contact with, a process known as contact tracing.
This allows health workers to identify networks of possible transmission early, carving the virus out of society like a surgeon removing a cancer.
South Korea developed tools and practices for aggressive contact tracing during the MERS outbreak. Health officials would retrace patients’ movements using security camera footage, credit card records, even GPS data from their cars and cellphones.
“We did our epidemiological investigations like police detectives,” Dr. Ki said. “Later, we had laws revised to prioritize social security over individual privacy at times of infectious disease crises.”
As the coronavirus outbreak grew too big to track patients so intensively, officials relied more on mass messaging.
South Koreans’ cellphones vibrate with emergency alerts whenever new cases are discovered in their districts. Websites and smartphone apps detail hour-by-hour, sometimes minute-by-minute, timelines of infected people’s travel — which buses they took, when and where they got on and off, even whether they were wearing masks.
People who believe they may have crossed paths with a patient are urged to report to testing centers.
South Koreans have broadly accepted the loss of privacy as a necessary trade-off.
People ordered into self-quarantine must download another app, which alerts officials if a patient ventures out of isolation. Fines for violations can reach $2,500.
By identifying and treating infections early, and segregating mild cases to special centers, South Korea has kept hospitals clear for the most serious patients. Its case fatality rate is just over one percent, among the lowest in the world.