May 20, 2024
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‘While the overall risk is less, it isn’t zero’

A look into why local hospitals are still following COVID-19 mitigations

By Denise M. Baran-Unland

Frank Butler, Administrative director of pharmacy Silver Cross Hospital waits to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine with the hospital nurses on Wednesday, December, 16, 2020, at Silver Cross Hospital ,New Lenox, III. Although the COVID-19 vaccine has helped to control the spread of the virus in communities, it hasn't eradicated it. Although the Centers for Disease Control Centers for Disease Control has eased indoor mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated people in many public spaces, facemasks are still required in hospital settings. (The Herald)

Dr. Christopher Udovich said he recently talked to a retired dentist who recalled a time when masks and gloves were not required for dentists.

Udovich, medical director at Silver Cross Hospital, shared that story to illustrate how health care protocols do evolve over time.

The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control says fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in many public spaces but must still wear them in certain crowded indoor settings, such as airplanes, buses, prisons, homeless shelters and hospitals.

Udovich said health care professionals follow the science and guidance from the CDC. But Udovich also said he wouldn’t be surprised if some clinicians in private practice might still wear facemasks, even after the pandemic ends.

In an email Will County Community Health Center Executive Director Mary Maragos echoed that thought, saying the community health center will keep the mitigations as long as the CDC requires them.

Maragos then added, “Some form of social distancing and masking will remain after the requirements cease.”

As far as what – if any – mitigations might remain at Morris Hospital in the future is unknown at this point because Morris Hospital is more focused on the present risk, according to Janet Long, public relations manager at Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers

“We’re still very much in the moment,” Long said. “We still have higher number of positive patients than we’d like to see.”

Long feels mitigations in health care should be connected to the spread of the virus locally.

“We have to look at what is actually happening right here in the community,” Long said. “Right now we are focused on taking care of the patients who are sick with COVID as well as all our usual patients. And we are still very much fighting the virus. I can definitely tell you that in the last four weeks, we’ve had more patients hospitalized with COVID than we did last spring. Now that might sound alarming. But a year ago, everybody was staying home with the stay at home order. That’s the difference.”

Long said it’s not just the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes a hospital to enact mitigations. She said Morris Hospital has restricted visitors in past years when flu cases were high in the community.

But whatever mitigations Morris Hospital adopts in the future, Long said they will be aligned with CDC guidance and that Morris Hospital’s doctor’s offices “will always uphold the highest safety measures.”

“We pride ourselves on our safety,” Long said.

Udovich said the “light at the end of the tunnel” is certainly in site and that the new guidelines from the CDC as well as the recent approval of the Pfizer vaccine or the 12 to 15 age group are all encouraging signs.

But the COVID-19 variants are still a concern, Udovich said. And although the numbers of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 is down, Silver Cross did still have 24 patients hospitalized with the virus on Friday, Udovich said.

“It’s nice to be moving in a positive direction,” Udovich said. “But we can’t forget this is still out there. There are still people in the hospital – pretty sick people. And, unfortunately, one person passed away from COVID in the last 24 hours from the hospital. While the overall risk is less, it isn’t zero.”