By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
A second case of COVID-19 was confirmed for a resident of the City of Mesquite. In keeping with standard protocol, the City received an email notification of the second case from Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) on Wednesday afternoon, April 1.
Notice of the second case was posted immediately on Wednesday to the City’s COVID-19 information website at health.mesquitenv.gov. John Gately, Public Information Officer at Mesquite Fire and Rescue Department reported that the person, identified only as a female, was tested for the virus at a Mesa View Regional Hospital (MVRH) clinical facility.
“The person was not admitted to the hospital, though,” Gately said. “They were tested as an outpatient.”
Gately said that there was no further information about the patient’s identity or whereabouts released publicly to the city. Releasing any detailed information about a health care patient would be against the law, he said.
“We are getting a lot of questions from people about why we are not telling who the person is, and where they have been, so that they know whether they are at risk,” Gately said. “But having that information really shouldn’t change anything. People shouldn’t be going out and interacting with others anyway. They should be practicing social distancing and washing hands and disinfecting; all the things we are being told to do. So nothing should really change with that information.”
In addition, the information simply isn’t available to City officials. “The fact is: I don’t know who it is, the mayor doesn’t know who it is, none of us are given that information,” Gately said. “Our dispatch center is notified of the household so that if emergency response personnel have to be dispatched there, they will be prepared for that. Other than that, we really don’t know anything.”
According to Mesa View officials, the person received a test after presenting to a clinical physician with symptoms similar to COVID-19 about two weeks ago. The person had reportedly been travelling out of the area previously.
MVRH spokesman Rob Fuller explained that the usual protocol in such cases is for a test to be taken immediately and sent to a medical lab. The medical provider then directs the patient to immediately begin wearing a medical face mask and to observe a 14-day in-home quarantine from that time forward. This is an attempt to contain the virus should the test come back positive.
“In this case, that protocol was followed to the letter and it apparently worked just as it should,” said Fuller. “The patient did that. And the word we have is that the patient is in good condition and recovering.”
Fuller acknowledged that, though the test was sent to the lab immediately, it took nearly two weeks for the results to come back.
“The system is bogged down and so the more severe cases - the ones that are inpatient cases – those tests are given a higher priority,” Fuller said. “If they are not inpatient cases, the results come back a bit slower.”
In this case, by the time the test results had come back, the patient’s quarantine period was nearly over Fuller said.
“That is why it so important that the quarantine be ordered immediately after the test is taken and not wait for the results,” Fuller said.
When COVID-19 tests are processed at a medical lab, the results are sent back to the provider as well as to the public health authority with jurisdiction over the community where the patient resides, Fuller explained. In Mesquite and the surrounding area, that authority is SNHD.
“Once the health district is notified of a positive test, they contact the patient and do a full investigation of where the patient has been and who they have been in contact with,” Gately said. “So if you have been around this person, you’ve already been notified about it. Otherwise, there is no need for folks to worry in this case.”
The first Mesquite resident testing positive for COVID-19 was tested last week, but not at MVRH. According to SNHD, that person was tested elsewhere but had declared a Mesquite address. No other information about the case is available.
Mesquite Mayor Al Litman announced the second case briefly at the beginning of his daily podcast message to the community on Thursday morning.
In an interview on Thursday afternoon, Litman confirmed that there was almost no information given back to the city on the positive cases.
“We get daily reports from the health district but there are really no details,” Litman said. “If there is another positive case, we are only notified of it. No personal information or other detail is given in the report, and that is the way it should be. The details of investigating each case is done completely under the health district’s purview. They are the regional health authority. The City wouldn’t have adequate resources to pursue an investigation on that scale anyway.”
