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CEO Taylor: Precautions taken.
Cornell Scott Hill Health Center has removed all patients from its Grant Street inpatient addiction-recovery facility after two people there tested positive for Covid-19. It has also taken steps at all its facilities to enable people to get health care without getting sick.
That update comes from Cornell Scott Hill Health CEO Michael Taylor.
Taylor told the Independent Tuesday that all 25 patients at the residential treatment center on Grant Street have been relocated. Some are homeless, and are being put up in motel rooms. Some had a place to go and are staying in isolation. All are being treated remotely.
Hill Health took that action in consultation with the city Health Department after first a Grant Street staff member, then a patient, tested positive for the coronavirus. They are both now being treated at Yale New Haven Hospital.
Then a third person, who was visiting Hill Health’s Columbus Avenue facility, displayed possible symptoms. That person has been tested and is currently at the hospital as well.
“We were having one person after another. We knew we had a situation on our hands,” Taylor said.
“We are taking every precaution to protect both staff and our patients.”
No one else associated with the Grant Street shelter has tested positive, according to Taylor.
Now Hill Health is making sure at all its facilities that anyone arriving — staff as well as patients — is screened for symptoms before going inside. The center has set up tables outside each facility to do that.
The centers continue to see patients, although “people are justifiably reluctant” to come in for preventive care appointments, Taylor said.
Hill Health operates 11 locations in New Haven County.
During a press briefing Monday, Mayor Justin Elicker and city Health Director Maritza Bond alluded to the cases at the rehab facility, though they did not identify it.
A previous story about that briefing follows.
Covid Updates: 13th City Case Is Rehab Patient; 2nd Patient Suspected; 15 Others Tested, Isolating
Two patients at a local substance abuse recovery program have either tested positive or are suspected of having Covid-19, while around 15 fellow patients in that same shelter have gone into self-isolation as they too are tested for the novel coronavirus.
Mayor Justin Elicker delivered that update Monday afternoon during his latest virtual coronavirus-related press conference, which was held via the Zoom online video-sharing app.
Elicker and city Health Director Maritza Bond said that a total of three people affiliated with a small local substance abuse recovery program — which they refused to identify by name — have either tested positive or are strongly suspected of having Covid-19.
Two of those people are patients who stay in one of the program’s shelters, while one is an employee who works in a separate facility that is part of the same local healthcare system. All three are currently hospitalized and in stable condition, Bond said.
Elicker and Bond said that one of those patients tested positive Monday morning, marking the 13th confirmed positive covid-19 case in the city.
The second patient’s test results have not yet come back, Elicker said, though that patient does have symptoms that correspond with the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus and the city strongly suspects that that patient does have Covid-19.
The employee, meanwhile, tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday. Elicker and Bond said that employee works in a separate program that is affiliated with the same local substance abuse recovery program that operates the shelter with the two symptomatic patients.
“All of the other [patients] are being tested right now and are in self-isolation,” Elicker said about the roughly 15 fellow patients who share the same shelter space as the patient who tested positive and the other patient suspected of having Covid-19.
“We have to not compromise the confidentiality,” Bond said about the city’s decision not to share the name of the substance abuse recovery program. “We do not want to stigmatize, and we want to preserve the privacy of those infected.”
Elicker defended the decision not to share the name of the facility by saying that his administration does not want people to panic and unduly fear an organization that is still providing safe healthcare services just because several people there have tested positive for Covid-19 and are now self-isolating.
“Part of our concern is that we’re protecting the integrity of organizations from misinformation or misunderstanding of the actual significance of small pieces of information,” he said.
Other updates Monday included:
• Elicker said that the Southern Connecticut Regional Water Authority donated 200 N95 masks to the city at a time when governments, emergency responders, and hospitals around the country are desperately in need of such protective equipment. Police Chief Otoniel Reyes reported that Walmart and a small construction company from Litchfield also donated N95 masks to the city.
• The homeless individual who tested positive for Covid-19, escaped quarantine at Yale New Haven Hospital on Sunday, and made his way to Milford is being monitored by the Milford Health Department.
• The city has not yet opened at Career High School the planned 75-bed shelter for homeless people who test positive for covid-19 but do not require hospitalization. “We’re working very hard to get this site online,” Elicker said. When asked about Yale’s new shelter at Payne Whitney Gymnasium for Yale staff, students and faculty who test positive for covid-19 but do not require hospitalization, the mayor said, “I think its a positive step that we have more facilities in the city that can alleviate pressure on the hospital. I think we all need to work together.”
• When asked about his message for local business owners who will have to close up their physical offices Monday night to comply with the governor’s latest emergency executive order, Elicker said that the restrictive orders, as difficult as they may be, have an economic as well as a public health justification.
“While this is going to have a deep toll on our businesses in New Haven and other communities,” he said, “the economic impact if we don’t take action now will be much much more significant. Even though there’s a very, very strong justification from a health perspective for what we’re doing, there’s also a strong economic reason for experiencing some pain now so that we don’t have incredible amounts of pain in the future economically.”