KINGMAN – Local health care professionals look to other communities and state and federal experts for useful data to make best practice decisions to manage a growing number of COVID-19 cases. Kingman Regional Medical Center (KRMC) Chief Executive Officer Brian Turney said most infected patients are able to beat the bug.
“Nationally what they’re seeing is about 80% of the cases are typical, flu-like symptoms and then about 15% are severe and about 5% are extreme,” Turney said. “We haven’t had enough cases to see if ours follow the same pattern.”
Seven positive coronavirus cases had been documented in Mohave County as of Sunday. Turney said Arizona experts predict cases will peak in this state by the end of April with any hospital patient crush reaching its zenith in May.
Turney expressed hope that local infection and mortality rates will be lower than other communities because residents of Arizona and Mohave County have had more time to implement personal hygiene and social distancing protocols. He said 800 people have recently used the KRMC Care Anywhere program to protect hospitals and other medical care facilities through use of virtual reality patient screening.
Turney said KRMC has been able to secure a sufficient supply of the important N95 masks health care workers wear to protect themselves.
“We received probably 4,000 to 5,000 additional masks and it looks like we might be able to get some on top of that from the national stockpile and other sources. We think we’ve got another source where we can get 10,000 to 20,000 more,” he said. ‘I think we’re in better shape that our sister hospitals in New Orleans and New York from an equipment standpoint. We are monitoring that daily, but we think we’ve made progress with that. We’re still able to get gowns and those types of things. The part we don’t know is just how big of a surge that we’ll have here in Kingman.”
KRMC established an Incident Command strategy for managing the virus on March 23.
Turney said staff is engaged in planning for different scenarios involving different numbers of COVID-19 patients. He said use of the vacant third story level of the Hualapai Mountain Campus if necessary is one possibility being explored.
- Dave Hawkins
