City Officials And Health Experts Discuss Strategy For COVID-19

The City of Fargo, West Fargo, Moorhead and Cass County as well as Essentia and Sanford were part of the meeting.

FARGO, N.D.- Sanford and Essentia Health are preparing for the spreading of the Coronavirus.

“We’ve also reached out and are working to enhance our tele care capabilities. Expanding our platform as well as we’re going to be implementing virtual visits for patients to do from home. We’re also suspending as of today, any elective surgeries and routine health visits. We’ve developed a hotline that people can access us,” says Dr. Andrew Bader, Physician at Essentia Health.

Sanford has opened a drive thru location where people can get tested for COVID-19.

They say no one should go without getting screened.

“If you feel like you have had an exposure, you are not feeling well, call your primary health provider or my Sanford nurse line. They will do a screen over the phone and we will get you to the right location and so we actually have appointments that we will book you into our drive thru location or dedicated sites that we will direct you for testing,” says Brittany Montecuollo, VP Of Operations at Sanford Health.

It takes three to five days to get results back.

Health experts have an estimate for the amount people that could be affected by the Coronavirus based on a model from the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Health.

“Looking back on outbreaks in China we can project for a population of 500,000, a little smaller than the state of North Dakota, that our best case scenario would be, six cases developed over a two month period. It’s clear as of today that we will cease that, since we are at six cases. Our medium case scenario would be 550 cases and our worst case scenario would be 3,600 cases,” says Doug Griffin, Vice president/medical officer of Sanford Fargo.

Essentia is also planning to open some testing locations next week.