Frequently Asked Questions

Community Engagement Virtual Meeting - Thursday, April 9

QUESTION # 1: How many positive patients in the County? How many are in Kaweah Health? How many inpatients are awaiting results of testing? How many have died in the County? How many have recovered?- Watch Video
- REMOVED - Information is no longer the most up to date information.

QUESTION # 2: Is Tulare County testing more people in surrounding counties? If so, is that part of the reason we have so many positive tests? - Watch Video
- Tulare County was initially named as the regional testing site for the Central Valley, so Fresno County when they would collect specimens would send them to Tulare County for testing. I think we will continue to see Fresno County's numbers increase as they now have greater testing capability within their own County. We have tested patients that live in other counties, Fresno, Kern and Kings that just happened to be in Tulare County when they became symptomatic.
QUESTION # 3: Are other nursing homes being inspected in light of the Redwood Springs problems?- Watch Video
- Kaweah Health stays in frequent communication with the various nursing homes. They have all significantly ramped up their precautions.
QUESTION # 4: When do you expect that the rate of new cases will start to fall off? - Watch Video
- The measures that California took very early on with respect to social distancing, sheltering in place, closing down so many different venues where people gather, has had an effect of flattening the curve. Because the San Joaquin Valley is less densely populated than these other areas, it was predicted that we were probably one to two weeks behind the Bay Area and Southern California. The latest information shows that for our region, the surge will begin around the 1st of May.
QUESTION # 5: Is KDMC providing more than supportive therapy to COVID-19 patients?- Watch Video
- Yes, we are providing the full scope of care. We are also using Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin.
QUESTION # 6: If a patient tested positive for COVID, and fought and recovered, is it possible for them to contract it again? - Watch Video
- Let’s think about the flu; the flu is a seasonal virus, and there’s a vaccination for it. In any given year, it’s probably 40% effective. Those that do get the vaccination and still contract the flu, generally have milder symptoms and reactions. The anti-viral medications that are given very early in the onset of the flu will greatly shorten the life of that virus. Every year we have to get vaccinated over and over again. Each year we get vaccinated because you are not immune. So with respect to the Covid-19 virus, at this time we do not know if this is a seasonal virus like the flu, but the whole discussion around antibodies would suggest that once you’ve had it, that you wouldn’t get it again during this same time period. There is a tremendous amount of research going on right now.
QUESTION # 7: Are there any vaccines close to being ready? - Watch Video
- Yes, scientists across the world are working very diligently on developing a vaccine and I believe it will probably be ready by late summer.
QUESTION # 8: Is the hospital participating in any research studies directly associated with the development of a vaccine? - Watch Video
- No, not at this time.
QUESTION # 9: What are employees and physicians doing to protect their families? - Watch Video
- While our employees are here at the hospital, we try our best to protect them by providing the personal protective equipment that they need when they're taking care of patients. We have followed the CDC guidelines on PPE from the beginning of this crisis.
  
  So all 5,000 of our employees have been issued masks and encouraged to social distance. Some of our employees have chosen to separate themselves from their families by moving into RV’s or hotel rooms to ensure they are not taking the virus into their homes.
  
  The Marriott, Holiday Inn Express, Comfort Inn and Suites in Visalia, Comfort Suites in Tulare, Quality Inn Tulare, and the Rotary Respite House are all facilities that have negotiated special rates for health care workers that want to be here near the hospital and still stay on the front lines but create that social distancing from their families to protect them.
QUESTION # 10: Our supply of PPE has been a big concern. How is that supply doing at this time?- Watch Video
- REMOVED - Information is no longer the most up to date information.

QUESTION # 11: *How many times can a clinician wear a mask and is that safe? - Watch Video
- REMOVED - Information is no longer the most up to date information.

QUESTION # 12: *Workers in grocery stores wear gloves for hours. Can they transfer the virus by touching objects? - Watch Video
- Wearing gloves gives you a false sense of security. Everything you touch with those gloves can be transferred to other surfaces or areas. The best defense against the virus is to wash your hands thoroughly and frequently with soap and water.

QUESTION # 13: *What about our supply of ventilators? - Watch Video
- As of today, we have a total of 103 ventilators. Seven are pediatric ventilators which leaves 96 adult ventilators. 30 are currently in use, and 66 are in stock unused right now ready to go.
QUESTION # 14: There is a post on social media that contains an article from a ”Public Integrity Organization” that implies that children and adults with disabilities like Downs Syndrome and or Cystic Fibrosis, etc., will be denied access to ventilators due to their lower overall expected lifespan should they get COVID-19. Needless to say, there are a lot of parents and family members angry about such a prospect in our community. Does such a blanket policy exist in California or at Kaweah Health?- Watch Video
- It does not. But these policies do exist across the Nation. Some have been developed by the state themselves, but some have been developed specifically by the hospitals. They are designed to help health care workers make incredibly difficult decisions when you're in a public health emergency. When you literally are in a crisis situation where you have demand that far exceeds availability of supplies and ventilators, things of that nature. These policies are generally critical care and ventilator use algorithms. We are currently working on one right now with a group of physicians, critical care intensivist, palliative care physicians and emergency medicine physicians and nurses, on what a policy would look like here at Kaweah Health. The policy and the algorithm that we are creating right now is a combination of one taken from the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania and North Texas Hospital in Texas. The one that we are most likely to adopt uses a scoring system, SOFA. SOFA is the clinical evaluation or assessment that's done of a patient and it looks at different conditions of the patient and they receive a score based on that condition. And oftentimes they're then placed into a category essentially of survival. Depending on the condition, the survivability rate is categorized into, low priority, intermediate priority and high priority. They don't include any references to or factor in anything about the worthiness of anybody's life or even life expectancy. It really is based on survivability of the virus and again looking at very quantitative specific clinical measures that help a physician make that determination. We would never exclude a child just because they had Down Syndrome or Cystic Fibrosis. Everybody would be treated the same. Anything that we develop will be very compassionately thought-out and developed and it will not take into account the age, the sex, the quality the perceived societal value of anybody. It will be based purely on the conditions that the patient has and that survivability rate.
QUESTION # 15: What is the current status of our in-house testing capabilities? - Watch Video
- REMOVED - Information is no longer the most up to date information.