ASHLAND — Ashland County has less confirmed cases of COVID-19 than in adjacent counties like Richland and Wayne, where 50 and 72 cases respectively were confirmed as of late Friday afternoon.
Ashland County has five confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, which falls better in line with the number of cases reported in Holmes and Knox counties to the south. Holmes has recorded three cases and Knox had 11 cases Friday at 5 p.m.
Of Ashland County’s affected five, four have recovered. The one remaining is recovering well, Hartson said.
About 100 persons of interest are still being monitored. This is an additional, unrequired precaution taken by the health department. The department reaches out to these individuals the same way it does those who test positive for COVID-19.
None of these “persons of interest” have tested positive so far.
At one point, 250 persons of interest were monitored via daily phone call check-ins.
Hartson estimates approximately 100 people have been tested within Ashland County. This may include non-residents. It’s also likely that Ashland County residents have been tested outside county lines, too.
But all positive cases within an Ashland County resident are ultimately reported to the Ashland County Health Department.
Chief Medical Officer at UH Samaritan Hospital Medical Center Dr. Tim Kasprzak said the testing criteria at UH Samaritan Medical Center is ever-evolving.
“When we first started, a lot of it had to do with travel history, had you traveled to China, had you traveled to different places. But now it’s evolved to contact history, symptomatology, and these upper respiratory symptoms beyond just a sniffle,” Kasprzak said. “The unfortunate thing is that we’ve also had flu season and despite what we’re having today, we’re going to have allergy season,.”
The primary factors are: symptoms, their severity and exposure. At-risk populations, healthcare workers, police and first responders may have priority for testing.
As part of the greater University Hospitals Health System, the Ashland-based Medical Center has the same access to testing as its locations in Elyria, Parma and Cleveland, Kasprzak said. If the criteria fits, the individual is tested at any of these UH facilities.
Kasprzak also addressed questions about how the hospital’s testing standards compare to other nearby healthcare facilities.
“Especially in the first few weeks, there’s probably a bit of what I’ll call ‘fog of war.’ Different systems, doing different things at different times, and you get different recommendations from different expert bodies at different times,” he said. “This has been incredibly dynamic. We’ve been very much learning on the fly, and trying to be organized on the fly.”
The system aims to align itself with the state’s measures, the CDC’s recommendations and on a local scale — what’s the standard at other facilities within the county?
It’s possible that one local healthcare facility may have deemed testing appropriate while another may not have, especially a few weeks ago, he said.
“In an ideal world, everyone gets tested right away, but we’re just not there yet, we’re not there from a scalable and scientific standpoint, and in the absence of being able to test everyone right away we have to apply criteria based on probability,” he said.
Tests for COVID-19 taken at the UH Samaritan Medical Center in Ashland are sent to Cleveland. Results are reported back within 12 hours.
The hospital has set up two separate pathways for patients — one for those with COVID-19 symptoms and another for those without.
“As it looks like we’ve blunted the surge here in Ashland in particular, you may see some of the outside tents starting to come down at Samaritan,” Kasprzak said. “Some of the outside tents that were set up for a surge but that does not mean we’re not remaining vigilant.
“We still have incident command calls routinely and are maintaining a high level of preparedness for any surge that may occur.”
