GRAND FORKS, ND (trfnews.i234.me) Here’s much of Friday afternoon’s, Grand Forks Virtual News Conference.
okay well good afternoon everyone and thank you for tuning in being informed working with facts in fact information and continue to work together as a community is how we’re going to get through these difficult times we’re in this for the long haul we should expect months and we’re already focusing not just on today but on the next phases to come I support governor bergen’s executive order addressing restaurants and bars state the governor’s executive order also directed the closing of recreational entertainment facilities our mission is to protect and serve the residents of Grand Forks in the state of North Dakota all of us need to practice social distancing and these steps are taken to limit opportunities for congregate we understand there are questions around the specifics of implementation of the department’s executive order – last night we expect the Derby updates and direction from his administration they will wait for further details at 4:00 o’clock my guidance for churches and other businesses like salons spas and barbershops is as follows take action with the safety of your employees and patrons as the highest priority Tonto CDC guidelines adjust your hours practice social distancing sanitize everything frequently and consider temporarily suspending services to the public or not mandate the closure of these entities at this time this time they encourage them to take the above recommendation seriously the governor has been leading on the state level and there is prepared to take additional action if necessary to protect the residents of Grand Forks we must be united to flatten the curve of the quiver 19 in our community our friends and neighbors and loved ones depend on us to exercise personal responsibility and these extraordinary times I understand this is uncharted territory and a very different time for businesses and their employees we’re in the midst of a health crisis and at the same time an economic crisis the city is strong relationship with local partners like the Chamber and EDC the infrastructure is in place interprete said change we’re all in contact with the governor’s office Commerce and total partners so everything we can to make sure business continues I applaud all the businesses are very active proactively and you’ve taken a heavy heart for all the tough decisions orders are having to me these are serious times require serious or Java sees the grant work should support our businesses by utilizing variety takeout and delivery services when possible I had my takeout pizza for lunch and and looking forward to more we’re grateful to local businesses as well as too many partners from stepping up in better ways and our community’s time of need we have created a page on the city’s website where you can find resources including grocery resources monetary resources you know the business response assistant and grand first web.com /resources over the weekend we’ll be working with our partners to get actual solutions in these areas during these challenging times we will keep you updated again I want to share everyone that the city has continued to exercise its mission that to protect and serve the flood action plan is being implemented and will be ready for whatever comes our way mr. Feinerman for writing a quick summary on those activities as you saw yesterday streets are being plowed and garden is being cooked up our public safety departments like police fire and pset4 continue to execute their mission to keep us safe we have closed our buildings to the public for the safety of city staff and the public we’re still doing business or encourage our residents to utilize our virtual City Hall and Grand Forks where to secure applications pay bills and apply for permits these are extraordinary times I cannot stress the importance of personal responsibility enough we need to take these actions for each other together United thank you Thank You mayor also on the call here I should I’m sorry I should have prefaced a Mayor Brown obviously giving his statements and then also we will hear from Altru and dr. Josh deer also on the line not expecting to make a statement but available to answer questions mr. Todd Phelan and miss Deb Swanson from Grand Forks Public Health on field and city administrator so next we’ll head over to Altru and get to dr. deer hold on one second Josh we’ll get you all situated go ahead doctor here you go doctor all right so you can hear me thank you so we’re here today to discuss again from a community perspective what we can do as a City Department of Health and health system for how we can combat kovat we continue to press on with our daily operations as usual at Altru in a quite a different time our phone call volume yesterday again on the kovat line increased we continued to screen patients as the North Dakota Department of Health guidelines change in guidance from them we’re limiting visitors to one as I discussed yesterday working around the clock 24/7 in our command center or continue to practice social distancing frequent hand hygiene washing surfaces more often including doorknobs and table surfaces and from a personal perspective our lifes are changing I mean I haven’t seen my wife very much in the last couple days or kids but I think the work that we’re doing here at Altru health systems is very important and we continue to support our community partners as well as other regional hospitals as they look for guidance from both us and this feat and we’re having talks on a daily basis about how we can pool our resources to combat kovat the best we can locally so thank you for this forum again John thank you thank you dr. dear as we sit here wasn’t expecting any prepared comments from mr. Phelan door mr. Swanson so we will open the floor up for questions from the media and please use the hand raised and we have one right here from mr. Joe Bowen oh you guys scare me oh cool how many testing kits does altru have available at the moment dr. dear can did you hear that question the question was how many test kits does ultra have at the moment I will get you unmuted go ahead doctor this is changing by the hour I don’t have the specifics but would I continue as we are responsibly prepared with the limited number of tests both locally and nationally this isn’t just a halt to crawl through problem to accurately test and diagnose patients that have concerns over kovin particularly those who are at the highest risk the North row to provide help is changing recommendations and we’re making sure that our testing supplies are in line with the needs that we’re going to need in the future another question for mr. Joe Bowen from the Grand Forks Herald go ahead Joe hello again so do you have a number even a ballpark one go ahead doctor no we don’t as I said we’re actively managing the situation and we feel that we are at a safe spot for the patients that we are planning to treat in the coming weeks and months and Joe did you have another question I have quite a lot what is the requirements for getting tested for the Crone virus what sort of like how do you guys decide who gets a test priciple boo sure go ahead doctor yeah so how we decide who gets a test really is dictated through the North Dakota Department of Health at this time the testing is more limited and that’s understandable if you think about if we screen every asymptomatic patient right now that wants a test we are going to have the needed test for those that really needed the most and the people that need it the most are those who are admitted to the hospital and have serious illness those exposure and other risk and those who are in the healthcare field so we need to make sure that we’re testing those populations both from a patient and community perspective if we have staff that are also ill or carriers of the koban we want to make sure we have testing available for those people so that we can be properly quarantine and reducing the risk for our community and whole as as a whole thank you doctor any other questions out there as I’m looking for a raised hand I there there’s sorry about that Joey you said you had quite a few so yeah quite a lot I put out a thing on Facebook and Twitter and said hey what questions you want me to ask and now I have a five page Google Doc so I guess I have one more question I guess on the healthcare side of things and that is how many tests of you guys administered in Grand Forks go ahead doctor yeah I don’t have a specific number in grab horse but I know that our health system as of this morning 7:00 a.m. we have screened over 200 patients through our Kovach hotline and our curbside screening and screening throat clinics that have appropriate patients who had met criteria at that time thank you doctor go ahead Joe oh yeah sorry I just want to make sure I’m not steamrolling anybody here um let’s see here do you feel that Altru has enough personal protective equipment if infection rates rise in the area doctor yeah at this point in time we have enough PPE or personal protective equipment and are in constant communication with our State Health Department on supply availability however this is a national shortage as I said and actually a not just national a worldwide shortage and you do hear about this on the news in places that are further along in the cloven outbreak than we are so this is something we’re actively managing and we’re managing responsibly and before I go back to mr. bone at the Grand Forks Herald to your point you will go back you don’t worry does anyone else have any other questions or or should we have a mr. bowen continue to go through his list I don’t see any hands raised at this time so Mr Bowen with the Grand Forks Herald I have opened your mic continuing again all right still this is be kind of consolidating a few different questions but basically as people come back from say spring break or maybe there are Snowbird coming back from another state is there anything they should be doing once they get back to town should they be self quarantine for how long with what should they be doing I’m gonna start with mr. dr. deer on this one and mrs. Swanson if you would like to jump in on this one just let me know Bo we’ll start with dr. gear I think you’re gonna hear the things that we all say and presidents been saying our governor’s been saying our local health department’s been saying over and over is that we are wanting those people to self quarantine right now for 14 days also hand-washing coughing into your elbow personal distancing those are all things that these people should be doing thank you doctor um I’m gonna get it over real quick – Deb Swanson I yeah do you have any comment on this question at all yes I do thank you John for the opportunity to add a perspective from the Grand Forks Public Health Department we too are concerned about the possibility of students and others returning to the community perhaps after Spring Break from all of our higher education institutions or others that are traveling we have a location on our website where they can go and complete a survey and the information will go to the North Dakota Department of Health and they will get information and advice as to the areas that they’ve traveled and whether they’re high res I also want to point out that there are a number of ways to communicate with Altru with refworks’ Public Health Department and with the State Health Department for Grand Forks public health you can call seven eight seven eight nine zero zero Monday through Friday eight to five for questions related to testing or any other questions related to corona virus ultra hotline is limited to people who have symptoms and marginalization come in and be tested and that number is seven eight zero six three five eight also we are taking messages on our website and that address is health at Grand Forks gog.com we do implore the public to please please follow the guidelines for social distancing it is extremely important at this time especially as we add additional venues where people will be limited access or no access we understand this is asking a lot of people but it is really our best public health tool to preventing the spread once again back to the issue of college students or others returning to the community we strongly encourage that they get in touch with our institution und has been reaching out to students advising them that they do not need to come back to campus until April six they should check the und coronavirus blog on the und website for more information and I would say the same is true for any other institutions Thank You Deb this is the mayor yes where where you visited will you come back to Grand Forks you go through the same airport hubs as everybody else is returning home and you’re exposed to everybody who went everywhere in this country or the world so I find it interesting yes where you went is important but I also realize you’ve been exposed a longer journey home so I would strongly encourage that you do follow the guidelines and so I say okay and I would want to children in our community to be a daycare rather than to be with their grandparents so I think right now if that’s our safest alternative and I hope that they’re continuing to use this the safe practices of sweep and disinfection social distancing and other practices that we can responded to but I think that’s the safest alternative we have in prison anyone else like to comment on the daycare issue at all as I look at our panelists here no joke go ahead oh so just to clarify if I run on a daycare I don’t but if I did I would not be under an obligation to close as of yet correct yeah that is that is understand mayor would you like to comment on that place pretty good oh yeah K through 12 is daycare exempted presence at all would you advise people that they should be stocked up on certain items or not or do you expect business to go on as usual at the grocery store and I guess daily item level we’ll start with mr. Phelan on this one yeah Ryan I think as hugo’s really has been out front on this is that on they really are the supply chain is good they’re getting things on a daily basis and so there’s no need for for hoarding at this point the supplies are good they’re getting things in daily and we’ve heard that from other men or retail stores too like Target and Walmart that they continue to get shipments moving to Grand Forks and there’s no really no need for a hoarding oh yeah this is neil girls with high notes getting a lot of messages from employees around the region i’m not sure who wants to maybe take a stab at answering this but can you give any guidance to employees and large employers employers especially those that manufacturing and production plants where it’s sometimes there’s a thousand people at the at one shift in close proximity to each other any guidance for those employees and/or employers at the large production plants Mayor Brown I see you chomping at the bit on this one go ahead well right now our community faces three challenges we have the kovat 19 we have the upcoming pipeline we also have a pending economic crisis over the Komen 19 we have guidelines from the governor the partners about the wouldn’t control over the top right will see things happening on the Greenway the National Weather Service website will see certain actions we take a certain depth so we’re being proactive in some of the low-lying areas so that we won’t be scrambling at the end protect our community the third thing that we cannot price is based in our community with business listening sessions coming up next week and we have on Monday we have food and groceries Restaurant similar establishments Tuesday we go retail where’s there it is less manufacturing through something to discuss professional services and all these will be done to with the assistance of the chamber in the EDC and I understand that we have information from the governor’s office about unemployment and how people can apply for that so Todd I’ll turn it over to you go ahead Todd hold on Todd one second it’s not allowing me to unmute you okay there’s gonna be more guidance coming out from the state government federal government and we know Congress is going to pass a stimulus bill of some sort the state government is moving forward with some proactive programs regarding small and business in the lake and I think ISM is the mayor just said there’ll be more and more information coming out next week to include listening sessions and not only you can port in to have listening sessions but they have answering sessions so people have some predictability and actions that can be taken sooner rather than later so more coming we’re going to organize ourselves over the weekend get these policy areas organized and then develop some action plans for next week
COVID-19 Update: Grand Forks Hosts Virtual News Conference on Friday Afternoon
