In the past two weeks the LCO Health Center has Covid-19 tested 109 patients. We had 8 positives in this timeframe and 101 negative test results. Contract tracing is done in a partnership with Sawyer County Health and our LCO Covid-19 team. Our positivity rate has been heading in the right direction.
Since Covid-19 began back in January of last year, the LCO Health Center has been able to slow the spread of the virus by following the CDC guidelines with Tribal Governing Board & IHS support. The CDC early on set a standard for slowing the spread of the virus at below 5% infection rate. We have not exceeded this rate of infection over this timeframe.
A decreasing infection rate is due to vaccinations, numbers of those whom have already been infected and recovered, and adherence to CDC guidelines of wearing masks, hand washing, disinfecting, social distancing, and avoiding gatherings of ten or more. We ask all LCO community members to please continue to follow these guidelines. LCO Health Center staff have worked very hard and have administered over 850 vaccinations in the last six weeks. We are vaccinating 40 patients per day this week.
Due to the amount of vaccine that has been coming in and the demand for vaccinations over the next eight weeks, the LCO Health Center will be holding mass vaccination clinics every Wednesday. We are utilizing the same teamwork approach to complete these vaccinations as with our first ones. The schedule for these vaccines begins on Wednesday February 17th 2021. We are not scheduling patients on Wednesdays for the next 8 weeks, except for vaccinations and chiropractic.
1st doses: Wednesday Feb 17th, Wednesday Feb 24th, Wednesday 3/3/21, Wednesday 3/10/2021, 2nd doses: Wednesday 3/24/21, Wednesday 3/31/2021, Wednesday 4/7/2021, Wednesday 4/14/2021. On these dates, Pharmacy will remain open.
Gary Girard, Health Center Director/LCO Public Health Officer, Dr. Steve Miszkiewicz, Medical Director, Christian Clarquist RN/Charge Nurse/Pain Management