The Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management held a Community Conversation to offer in-depth insight into the steps taken following the most recent COVID-19 death in Anchor Point. It was held on Wednesday night and hosted by Dan Nelson, Borough Incident Commander, alongside Brenda Ahlberg, Information Officer.
Mr. Nelson talked about what it means to decontaminate an emergency vehicle, following Wednesday’s reported death of a patient who had previously been admitted to South Peninsula Hospital: “If anybody’s ever seen an ambulance or been in one, of course you know there’s a compartment in the back – a box, as we call it – where we provide medical care. So, after each and every medical call, one of the protocols is to decontaminate and disinfect all of the surfaces of that ambulance. In addition to things like changing out the linens and all of those things you might see in a hospital setting, all of the surfaces that are touched, all of the tools – anything that is not disposable – gets decontaminated, making sure we disinfect every surface.”
He also discussed the potential exposure of COVID-19 to first-responders: “Because that P.P.E. was in-place, the responders who were on that crew are self-monitoring and have protocols in-place to report anything unusual to the physician so we can follow-up with that. I actually talked to one of them today and we joked a little bit, saying, ‘I’m watching every cough,’ we’re making sure all of those folks are being careful around families, practicing good hygiene, and monitoring any symptoms, and we’ll go from there.”
Contact tracing was also explained, one of the most important steps taken once someone tests positive: “When they do have any positive case, so this has happened for each of our cases here on the Kenai Peninsula as well as around the state, they’ll go through and do contact tracing to help folks essentially re-trace their steps and who they may have come in-contact with, what situations may potentially have caused any type of infection or transmission of COVID-19, and what precautions were taken. They go through that process to backtrack what people have done, what their activities have been to find out if there are others that need to be contacted with the potential exposure or any activities that would have caused the same thing.”
Community Conversations are held on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. Questions can be asked on the @KBPAlerts livestream on Facebook, and the conversations are carried live on KSRM 920 AM.