Health Experts Say It’s Okay To Go To The Clinic For Non-Coronavirus Related Illnesses

Sanford Children's Southwest Clinic is operating only as an urgent care center for children.

FARGO, N.D. – Health care workers are seeing a significant decrease of patients in urgent care saying some are choosing to treat illnesses and injuries at home.

“The number of patients we’re seeing is probably 80% less than usual. Seeing patients concerned about COVID even has been pretty low. So, it’s one of two things, right. It’s good that people are following stay at home orders and being safe about not exposing the rest of the community but, we are concerned that people may be ignoring symptoms that need to be checked out too,” says Dr. Aaron Jost, a Pediatrician at Sanford Health.

They say there are some injuries and symptoms that need to be treated by a medical expert, especially when it comes to pediatric care.

“You always have the resource of nursing lines and they can give you advice, but there are certain things if you are having shortness of breath from your asthma, you’re having lots of pain from your ear infection, you’re having a sore throat that persists, you’re having fever that keeps going on for a long period of time. You have an injury that needs stitches, x-rays, all those things are really important and we don’t want people to forget that we’re here to help them with those things too and we care about any pain or suffering from all of those things too,” he says

The clinic is also taking extra precautions and making sure there is no possible interaction with anyone who might be showing symptoms of COVID-19.

“When you walk through the door, you’re asked questions about your fever, your cough, exposure to someone else with COVID. You’re given a mask immediately. We even have people sit in separate areas of our waiting room, depending on whether they have symptoms that are respiratory vs non respiratory. People who have exposure to COVID, we actually try to room them immediately to keep them safe and other people safe,” he adds.

Because of the number of patients they’ve been seeing, the clinic says they have had no one waiting in the waiting room for about a month.