BISMARCK, ND (trfnews.i234.me) North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum called September the “darkest month” during a Thursday afternoon news conference on rising COVID-19 numbers.
good afternoon north dakota uh again i want to thank all of the folks who are listing in today live or who are watching on replay we appreciate your joining us and being part of the dialogue and conversation i do want to start by just saying i we know that uh there’s as we move into month seven uh of this uh pandemic in north dakota uh that there’s a lot of cumulative stress uh in north dakota and so i wanna thank and share my gratitude with those individuals whether there’s parents teachers health care workers local public health folks that we have working so hard kids whose lives have been disrupted uh grandparents uh and those that are elderly that may be living in the daily fear that they may catch something that’s going to be cause a very serious illness or death we just know that there’s a lot of stress and of course with the economic disruption that’s also uh accompanied this uh we know that that that adds to the uh the challenges that people have and that the few people are feeling uh that and then we throw into that the you know challenges we’ve had in uh whether it’s in the oil industry or the challenging year we’ve had in agriculture uh it’s just putting a lot of pressure on people across our state and across our nation and i think that here in north dakota uh there’s a time here where we we know that when we’ve been through challenging times in the past whether it’s particularly i think floods are some of the best examples where entire communities have been at risk or have suffered sort of the loss and the grieving that can come when you lose something whether it’s losing a flood in a house or lost you know time or or other impacts from these kinds of natural disasters but you know during those times we know that north dakotans have risen up we know that people have stepped up uh with incredible grace and compassion we know that faith-based communities have come forward and supported people uh we’ve seen it this fall in the ag community when you know one individual was uh unable to complete his harvest and all the neighbors came together i mean that’s those are examples of north dakota at its at its very best and then i would throw on top of all the stress we have we know that some people might say there’s a information overload uh but there certainly also is a misinformation overload uh because uh never at a time in our society in our world there’s been uh so much uh information at our fingertips that often is uh inaccurate uh that is uh also being spread around which just adds and fuels to the uh emotions of fear and concern uh that people have and uh and and those can be uh the motive for some of that can be nothing more than the uh you know the business models that are trying to capture the attention of people uh and uh on social media so if with with that as background uh again i would just uh start by opening today as again to say uh gratitude for all of those people who are showing grace and compassion to their neighbors and their friends and their their teammates uh and hopefully that all of us as we uh perhaps are at the point i hope which is uh going to be in history looked back as the darkest hour uh and maybe the most challenging time for north dakota in the pandemic that in this point of us going through this low point that we can look back and know that we did it with uh with grace and compassion and understanding today uh we’re pleased to have two guest speakers with us both from the north dakota department of health one is kirby kurt kirby krueger uh kirby we’re delighted to have him here he’s the director of disease control uh and molly howell who you’ve heard from this podium before our immunization program manager and she’s the assistant director of disease control but thanks to kirby and molly uh not only for being here for day but for their incredible and steadfast work they’ve been a key part of the team uh since the very beginning of the pandemic uh and again as we we take a look and we talk about the darkest month i mean there’s a lot of different ways to measure uh the the the pain and the loss uh during this and the you know sometimes when you look at numbers it can can just feel like statistics but i want to start by sharing that was we concluded september uh far and away from a uh people passing away uh with covid our worst month yet it took us 140 days uh battling this pandemic to reach 100 deaths and that was in a time when we knew less about how to manage it today the survival rates of people uh coming out of icu are better than ever before across our country with the advances we have that that’s still not a place you want to be you don’t want to be an icu with kovid because i don’t know anyone who’d want to be going through weeks of you know headaches and nausea and breathing issues that would probably seem interminable to only to come out the other side of it perhaps with lasting effects but we are doing a better job of of having people survive that but today than we were six months ago because of increased knowledge and care but even with that even with that we still you know see ourselves here with 109 deaths in september and even if we take a look at the last week we lost more patients in the last week of september than we did in any of the months uh prior so i say this uh again uh with a sense of heartfelt loss and for for because well this may be a statistic a number here we know that each one of those individuals was somebody’s grandmother or grandfather father or mother brother or sister a friend a neighbor a mentor and we we feel the loss of those those families and we know that uh working together uh that we can make sure that we slow the spread and and bring those curves down again in those numbers so that we don’t see any months like that ahead of us and we can start heading heading back if you will in the right direction 67 of those fatalities or 67 of the fatalities uh or 61 percent uh occurred in long-term care facilities uh in the uh past uh month and uh in light of this we’re rolling out uh many mitigations to help our skilled nursing basic care and assisted living facilities to protect our state’s most vulnerable population uh and that includes stuff that our vp3 team has done all along but we’re going to keep you know doubling down on this that keeping covid19 out of our long-term care facilities whether it’s skilled nursing basic care assisted living becomes more of a challenge when we have increased spread in the community because of the number of workers that are moving in and out and also because we want to continue to facilitate visitation between families and their loved ones but we know that this creates additional increased risk but facilities that are experiencing outbreaks are taking part of increased testing at the state lab is processing those as i mentioned before we’re moving all tests from long-term care up to the priority level so they move to the front of the line if they’re coming into the state lab so the sooner we can id positive cases uh we can get them isolated and implement infection control measures we’re taking a hard look at working with facilities who’ve had serious outbreaks that have led to multiple deaths at their air purification systems there’s increasing evidence that again that if you’ve got spaces where we’ve got your air circulation outdoors uh you’re much better off than indoors you’re much better off in less crowded than you are in crowded you’re much better off uh in in places where uh you know people are wearing masks that are not and so we want to keep we keep we want to keep uh focusing on that aspect of it we also been deploying professional cleaning services to help facilities with outbreaks to do enhanced deep cleaning of any high-touch services in common areas uh we’re also working on coordinating staffing needs for facilities experiencing outbreaks because if there’s a number of positive cases with with residents that means that there’s a number of healthcare workers who’ve been exposed and who sometimes also become positive because they were close contact but this means we’re working on deploying cnas lpns and rns to fill open shifts in facilities up statewide we’ll be redeploying some of the nursing pool staff that we had to help with those and then redeploying and getting some of those nurses that were helping on test collections and back fill those with emts the vp3 task force is also providing advisement consulting and support services to any long-term care facility uh in our state to ensure that those prac best practices are being followed and there’s also a collaboration happening between key stakeholders to take a look at revised visitation guidance as we head into the winter months here in the northern part of the country we were able to accomplish a lot of visitation outdoor and safely this summer but the stakeholders include the reuniting reuniting families task force uh chaired by chris larson who’s a resident of luther memorial homes in mayville the north dakota long-term care association north dakota department of human services vp3 task force and north dakota department of health all working together to get input from families residents and facilities so that we can continue to connect residents and their families in a safe and practical manner because their the connections with family is also a key part of health when we take a look at at what we’re watching let’s jump into the the numbers the in terms of the the statewide positivity rate we can see the trend line overall um coming up right just below seven percent six point nine eight percent and this is a trend line well it’s not climbing as steeply as it was earlier it continues to climb and as we know this is an average for the whole state and which means we’ve got a number of counties uh with more than a ten percent positivity rate and quite a bit of testing and we’ve got uh some counties that have got under five percent and some even under three percent uh positivity rate so this is the the average of that uh but well we we don’t like the directions going we do know that we’re not operating in isolation uh the the virus does not uh respect the any state borders uh in terms of its transmission uh and so when we take a look at where we stack versus other states then we we this is from the john hopkins uh university data if you look at the left hand side of the screen in green those are uh states that have less than five percent that’s where we have spent the vast majority of the pandemic was in that area uh we’re in the group now that is that has uh has in the higher than uh five percent five to ten by the white house consider the yellow zone from a positivity above ten percent is a red zone or a warning zone and and we are uh in a relative to where this virus is moved it started out in the northeast went to the south went to the southwest and now has come on to the upper midwest and the in in the upper rocky mountains area and if we take a look at some of these numbers which are hard to see here but montana our neighbor to the west 8.3 percent uh wyoming at 12.6 percent those nebraska 13.3 these are all i believe the highest for any of these states kansas at 15.5 positivity rate iowa 17.2 positivity rate wisconsin 21.1 percent and south dakota with the highest positivity rate in the nation at 25.9 so again uh compared to the peer group of those in the uh in the this upper midwest great plains region well we don’t like the direction of our of our numbers uh going up versus going down uh there is a tide around us uh which is much higher and so again thank you to all the north dakotans who are doing uh their part uh to help slow the spread and to keep our positivity down and thanks to all the people that are working uh you know around in the state lab and around in public health in our health departments on the testing particularly those vulnerable long-term care to help us have accurate information about uh where the virus is and how we can mitigate against it again we’d like to get our positivity rate back to five percent or lower uh and and again we’re doing this again trying to be simultaneously we talk about the dual goals of saving lives and livelihood but our unemployment rate uh is uh for this for the nation or right now we’re the sixth lowest in the nation uh at uh five percent even so we want we always want to see that unemployment rate continue to drop but among the best of any states and that’s a reflection of the fact that we’ve largely kept the economy open as a matter of fact the kaiser family foundation reported just recently that north dakota is among eight states that have their economies entirely open and so if we can achieve these dual goals of having an open economy and in helping to maintain people’s economic health uh that always helps uh the physical health and the mental and behavioral health so if we can do that and continue to have low positivity rates that’s is the that’s the path we’re we’re pursuing another goal that we’ve had or i shouldn’t say before we go into another goal but let’s go into the numbers for the uh the statewide numbers we had 2848 new cases uh in the last week but a also a large number of recoveries divided by the number of tests we completed that was a 7.4 percent so that’s slightly higher because that’s a seven day rolling average when your numbers are going up your seven day average is always going to be slightly higher than your 14 days so the the seven percent i was referring to earlier is our rolling 14 day but on a rolling seven day uh increasing to 7.4 percent and again 3 690 confirmed active cases up about 29 uh from from yesterday the we do have a 106 people hospitalized since we were here last week we have had we we have had an increase in hospitalizations we’ve broken into that 100 percent mark there is going to be additional updates coming next week to our dashboard we have been working with with local officials and with the hospital association uh and with department of health uh to make sure that we are getting uh as we can additional transparency out on the dashboard so that daily everybody in the community could understand how many people we have hospitalized within at least within the the main tertiary hospitals the the largest hospitals we have in our state people can we want to be able to people can see how many beds are occupied by covid patients and how many icu beds and how many there are totally and we’re working to make sure that as we’re working to clarify the difference between licensed beds in the states and those that are staffed because it’s one thing to have a licensed bed but it’s also important that we have the staffing to be able to do that but as hospital stations continue to climb uh the covid uh percentage of that continues to be very low and in working with you know had a call with all the north dakota hospital association yesterday talked to individual facility leaders over last weekend and this past week and they’re all assuring us that while they’re seeing increased admissions the majority uh and they’re seeing increased admissions the majority of those are non-coveted related but there also is this increase of covet-related patients but they remain confident that they can meet the needs of their communities and regions but again this is something we want to monitor closely to make sure that we can have the hospital capacity necessary but again if you’re concerned about healthcare system availability and you’re healthy today there’s some simple actions that you can take which include socially distancing wearing a mask washing your hands avoiding large gatherings because uh if you yourself do not become sick uh then you won’t infect others then that will help take pressure off of the the system uh one other thing i want to mention here also when we talk about uh the the this topic here is the white house call from last week we did find out last week on monday we’ve talked about this but as the white house had earlier announced that they were buying a hundred and fifty million uh tests uh that the trump administration had secured and those uh tests uh are a 15-minute result uh time and they don’t require being transported to a lab and they’re 97 accurate so you have a a the those initial tests are starting to come 14 000 tests are on their way uh to north dakota right now the binax now rapid uh point of contact tests and that’ll complement our our robust testing strategy that we have that’s allowed us to keep our schools open and our economy open but there’s a number these will be a complete game changer in terms of how we’ll be able to use these by the end of december we expect to receive 220 000 of these cost-effective easy-to-use tests in north dakota and that would be our per capita share the white house announced on monday that they’re distributing these uh to the states on a per capita basis and we’re still working on finalizing the actual distribution plan for those tests but one place we anticipate using them for example would be both in nursing homes and in school settings for example if a student presented in a school with symptoms the school nurse could give a test right there in 15 minutes know whether the person is positive or not and uh and even if and and again this could allow to versus that multiple day holding period uh where maybe somebody gets sent home for a day or two waiting to find out their test uh same thing within nursing homes whether with visitation or with residents or staff it could really be a game changer to have that information also it’s a game changer in terms of cost because if there’s no lab cost and no lab staffing not only is a test substantially lower but the labor cost the transportation costs are eliminated almost completely and so this is a one point of great optimization my second point of optimization coming out of the white house call on monday related to vaccines and there continues to be strong progress among multiple u.s pharmaceutical manufacturers that are moving through very large uh vaccine human vaccine trials and if we were to see say in q1 of 2021 a vaccine that could be used for people 70 and older long-term care facilities and really reduce their risk that would also be a game changer in terms of how this country and our state could be working our way through the this pandemic want to take a look at the counties next if i could you know in the county active cases by county again darker on this means more cases these are just the numerators these are just the raw number of cases these are not at all divided by the denominator which would be population but we we do see here on this map that that of the 53 counties again all but one have at least one active case of covid so there is a disbursement across the state it is concentrated in the counties that have more population burley has 684 that’s the most initial 265 in morton county combined burley morton county 940 cases right here in burley morton and again the burley morton task force continues to work to try to address this but again people that are shopping or coming into burley morton again you’ve got a a say a higher percentage chance if we take a look at the uh the active cases per 10 000 uh which is where we start dividing by population you can see that in in burly morton uh or in stark county where there’s 319 cases but that translates into over 90 per 10 000 that is uh you know there’s three times the concentration of cases per capita in some of our western counties than we have in some of our eastern counties and so again we also look at the per capita uh rate there uh evans county uh leading the state in terms of a low population county but leading the state in terms of of cases per per capita and again we’ve got the uh as again and as we’ve talked about and and we met this week with local city leaders there’s some great work being done on the city and the county level in these areas of high activity as people are taking mitigation steps at the local level to try to address their unique situation on county risk levels uh this is something we’ve talked about every week where we’ve got the five five level risk uh this week we’re announcing no changes uh to the september 23rd risk levels uh there we of course continue to monitor uh all of the uh the positivity rates and the concentrations and the directions that they’re going uh but we’ll be back taking a look at providing any updates to this over a two week period next week so we’ll be we’ll we’ll have potentially have some changes both up and down next week but for this week we’re leaving everything uh where it was as of what we announced on september uh 23rd the next topic we want to talk about uh is a uh important one uh and it has to do with uh with the the topics of isolation and quarantine and let’s uh get clear in the two words uh those isolation is something that if you’re positive then you should be isolated because if you’re positive and you’re contagious then you should be in a position where you’re not in close contact with any other people people that are that are attending to you should be thinking about using ppe uh to protect themselves but you want to be isolated so that while you’re positive your first thing of course is to take care of yourself if you’ve got symptoms contact your health providers and make sure that you take this disease seriously but you should be in a position where if you know you’re positive then you’re not transmitting to anyone else quarantine is a procedure where people who’ve been exposed to someone who’s positive we ask them to quarantine we do know from the studies we’ve done uh at uh at the university students to the uh in the u.s uh that about 25 of the of the students that were quarantined uh were because they had a close contact uh with a positive uh later turned out that they also were positive statewide the numbers are a little bit higher they’re 29 uh plus percent so close to 30 percent on our of of all of people that have been contact traced uh who were a close contact later turned out to be a positive so this is a a an area where we know that there is a substantially higher likelihood that you will contract covid if you’ve been identified as a close uh contact but having said that so we know there’s risk we want to make sure that we’re achieving the most compliance we can uh and and and to make sure we want to make sure we’re providing some clarity to our quarantine guidance but there’s uh we know that right now uh that again we covet is also transmitted primarily uh you know through the air human to human and so it’s again if humans can stay away from each other uh then the the virus has got no place to to live and that’s why again we keep talking about these guidelines uh over and over again but these are common sense measures uh that don’t infringe on anyone’s liberties that are not these are these are guidelines not mandates so you can choose to do this uh as you uh care about others in your community uh which is keep your distance wear a face covering if you can’t socially distance wash your hands frequently avoid large gatherings and stay home if you’re sick and and let me just say something again on on masking and face coverings think about it when a mask or a face covering as as someone who might if they know they’re gonna cough they they you know cover their elbow and if in pre-pandemic if you were in a close conversation with someone and they had a cough and they turned away from you or coughed into their elbow or excused themselves uh you probably would you know say to that person or if they sneezed you might say because intake in parts north dakota but you would say you know you’re basically seeing that what they’re doing is acting out a consideration for you they’re not trying to keep themselves well they’re trying to protect the what just came out of their nose or mouth from their cough or their sneeze from going on you that would be you know common courtesy that we all practiced i think all the time almost uniformly putting face covering on is kind of like covering your cough only you’re doing it uh because we now know that that when you’re asymptomatic you can still be a transmitter this disease and so again uh i say as i said last spring the one thing if you see someone wearing a mask there’s one thing to say to them and that’s really thank you because they’re they’re protecting you uh the same way they are when they’re uh protecting uh when they’re covering their cough if they were in your presence and so again this is a a just a common sense uh thing that we we knew before the pandemic that it was not a good deal to cough or sneeze directly in someone’s face we knew that if you’re a surgeon doing surgery you wore a mask in case you might have sneezed in uh in somebody’s open uh surgical incision i mean these are just common sense thing that we all understood and so we’re trying to bring that common sense forward that keep our distance and wear these face coverings if you can’t we
ND Gov. Burgum Declares September as the “Darkest Month” in COVID-19 Update
