As Pima County health officials confirmed a second presumptive local case of coronavirus, officials said they are “hopeful” that a declaration of a national emergency by President Trump will help make testing more readily available in the Tucson area.
Health officials confirmed Friday evening that a second Pima County resident has been diagnosed with COVID-19. The individual is currently hospitalized, and that person’s household contacts are in at-home isolation. It is unknown how the person contracted the virus, and officials are working to investigate whether the exposure was travel-related or due to community spread.
So far, officials have not yet identified a link between this patient and the county’s first coronavirus case, which was announced Monday. The first individual to contract the virus has since made a full recovery. This brings the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona to 10.
“This new case highlights the importance of hospitals, doctors, public health and the general public working closely together,” said Dr. Bob England, interim director of the Pima County Health Department. “Our disease investigators have been working day and night to protect public health and are in the process of identifying and reaching out to any people who may have been in contact with the case while infectious.”
Who can be tested
The announcement came one day after the city of Tucson took preventive measures to curb the spread of the serious respiratory illness, and just hours after Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency in order to free up more money and resources.
Still, Trump said officials don’t want people taking the test unless they have certain symptoms. “We don’t want people without symptoms to go and do that test,” Trump said, adding, “It’s totally unnecessary.”
In an interview Friday, England said about 18 Pima County residents have been tested for the virus, and the results of several tests are still pending.
Even with Trump’s announcement that communitywide testing would be available, England said this wouldn’t be an actuality for at least a couple of weeks. He said the CDC recommendation is “to limit testing to people who are either really sick or likely to have been exposed.”
“The other thing that has complicated this is not just that people would want the test, but people have now been told over and over on national TV that it’s widely available, when it just isn’t. Maybe in a couple of weeks or more, I’m really hopeful, but that doesn’t help you today.”
In the meantime, England said people will be able to get tested only if they go through a physician first. Local doctors will take samples only from individuals who have had known exposure to the virus or are showing severe symptoms.
“I you haven’t been a traveler and haven’t been exposed to a known documented case of disease, the only way you can meet the criteria by being sick is to be severely ill in the hospital and have all the other usual causes already ruled out. In other words, you test negative for the flu and other viral causes,” he said.
England emphasized that people will not be able to walk into a private lab like LabCorp or Quest Diagnostics and request a coronavirus test. Right now, only samples that come from physicians will be accepted.
Before Trump’s announcement, some local government representatives expressed frustration regarding the lack of availability of testing, but otherwise agreed with prioritizing testing of those with serious cases.
“Figuring it out on the fly”
Board of Supervisors Chairman Richard Elias said the protocols for testing are “practical and smart given the availability of tests to the public.”
“If testing was easily available everywhere, then that’s crazy, let everyone have it,” he said. “We should make sure we’re taking care of people who are vulnerable, and science should ultimately dictate.”
But Tucson Councilman Steve Kozachik said “we don’t really know the magnitude of who is showing positive” without expanded testing.
“One of the flaws in what we’re doing is that we’re testing people who are showing severe symptoms,” he said. “We’re not testing everybody, were only leaving a huge amount of people who are standing with the sniffles wondering.”
He said he didn’t feel the local and federal government officials were adequately prepared for this type of outbreak.
“The fact that we’re running around and figuring it out on the fly shows we’re not prepared,” Kozachik said.
Elias agreed, saying, “I don’t think we could have been as possibly prepared as anyone would have wanted us to be. The lessons we’re going to learn from this are going to be taught at universities for years.”
Vice Mayor Paul Cunningham said the government officials are “going to be judged after the fact.”
“I like that the mayor has already set the parameters for the water bills,” he said. “I think we’re going to prepare a letter to the courts, asking to suspend evictions for a little bit. There’s a lot of people who are going to be losing their jobs, or they’re going to be out of a couple paychecks, and we need to be cognizant of that. If we can get through this with a minor economic bump instead of a big, big hiccup, we’re going to be all right.”
Councilwoman Nikki Lee called the issue “something really unprecedented for all of us.”
She suggested a study session at a council meeting earlier this month to focus on Tucson’s ability to continue delivering core services as the virus progressed. She said the results of that from each department should be available next week.
“That’s been a really important piece of the pie for me. … We’ve got buses, we’ve got roads, we’ve got water. We’ve got all these critical services.”
Taking closures’ impact into account
England expressed frustration regarding the decision of Tucson Mayor Regina Romero to take actions, including announcing limitations on special-event permits for events with more than 50 people.
“A lot of things happen around us that I wish we had been part of and we only hear about it after the fact,” he said. “Neither Pima County nor the state have been part of recommending any closures. Evidence is still coming in, and we’re still trying to balance the severity of the disease against the impact of closing things down. And my opinion is evolving too, but we haven’t yet gotten to the point of recommending any closures.”
He ultimately advised that people not go to the emergency room unless absolutely necessary. Health Department officials are working with local hospitals to make sure they have enough resources available for a big influx of patients.
“We’re tracking who has what supplies so that hospitals can share with each other if one starts to run out and then we can move resources around,” he said. “We have a small amount of supplies ourselves that we’ve been trying to save for the hospitals, but there are other partners who need that, too, like home health agencies and long-term-care facilities and others that work with really vulnerable people.”
