HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the Chief of Staff at Northern Montana Hospital is speaking out on the need for people to comply with the Governor’s face covering directive.
Dr. Kevin Harada published an editorial earlier this week on the matter and says there are two main benefits to wearing a face covering.
“Yes it does provide you with some benefit. But it’s also protecting your neighbor from you. That’s why we ask people to use it where you’re out in public or out where you can’t social distance.”
Dr. Harada says that although there are a few exceptions, most people should be able to wear a mask without any problems.
“Yes, there are a few conditions, COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or respiratory illnesses, but most of my patients with COPD have no problem wearing a mask. Yes, there are some people that have claustrophobia or anxiety. So it really is a patient to patient thing, where if you can’t tolerate it, trying to find an alternative or something like that. It really is a well tolerated intervention with very minimal risk.”
In Dr. Harada’s column, he said that there appears to be community spread of COVID-19 in Hill County, although the Hill County Health Department has not declared that to be the case quite yet.
“They’re still doing a lot of their contact tracing, their research to see, but we have some cases where we aren’t sure about where their contacts may have been. And really the definition of community spread is when it’s in the community and people are getting it without known contacts. The reason I said it appears to be (community spread) is because we don’t have the full story quite yet. We still have some cases that are appearing just a couple days ago and they are still working on that…We have several cases out there without known contacts.”
Dr. Harada added that Northern Montana Hospital remains in good shape as the pandemic continues.
“We haven’t had an influx of COVID patients. We have been fairly steady from just a normal hospital running standpoint. And with regards to PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), I think we’re OK. And one of the things I like to say with PPE is ‘you’re OK until you’re not OK. So from day 1, we’ve been conserving, we have protocols that conserve PPE to make sure that we are be able to protect our staff when we do see (an increase).”
