Health leaders warn McLean of disaster. She says Boise may enforce virus protections
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean convened a meeting of local health care executives on Tuesday, and they gave a largely unified message: Action is needed, or the Treasure Valley faces disaster.
What could disaster look like?
▪ Further stretching health care providers, who are already burned out after taking on extra shifts and caring for more patients than ever.
▪ A doubling of the number of COVID-19 patients by Christmas, followed by a tripling two months from now.
▪ Using hospital conference rooms as spaces to house and treat patients.
▪ Putting off elective surgeries for so long that they become unavoidable.
▪ Curable diseases becoming incurable, because they were not found early enough as a result of standard tests needing to be put off as medical systems juggle strain
“We’ve been giving this message as health professionals since April,” Dr. Jim Souza, chief medical officer for St. Luke’s Health System, said. “We are starting to wonder if anyone’s listening.”
It doesn’t need to be that way if officials take action, said Souza and executives from Saint Alphonsus Health System and Primary Health Medical Group.
To avoid straining the health care system any further, Souza recommended that the mayor “activate the business community” to support businesses with healthy COVID-19 practices and “bring enforcement and consequences” against people who are not following health guidelines.
McLean said that city officials are working on a plan that would allow the city to “protect the public through enforcement of orders.”
She did not say what that may look like. Asked for further information, Seth Ogilvie, McLean’s spokesperson, said the plan is still being crafted.
Souza noted that ideally, that sort of action would be statewide, not just at the city level. Gov. Brad Little has declined to order mandatory mask-wearing and social-distancing measures that would be enforced by police.
Odette Bolano, president and CEO of the Saint Alphonsus Health System, said the toll the pandemic has taken on health care workers is “huge,” because not only are they trying to manage the influx of extremely ill patients at work, they are dealing with the mental toll of the pandemic outside of work.
She reminded people that hospitalizations are a lagging measure of how bad COVID-19 can be. By the time a person has to go the hospital, she said, it is the end of a long trail of other problems.
A quarter of all patients coming in for tests are positive for COVID-19, Bolano said, and health care workers are getting exposed every single day.
“We need our health care workers,” she said. “They don’t have a choice. They’re here to serve this community. And when the community doesn’t respect the need of us needing to keep our people safe in order for them to do their job for the community, it’s a little bit disheartening. It’s really gut-wrenching.”
Bolano said public officials need to come together to encourage people to wear masks, socially distance and avoid large gatherings for the next 60 to 90 days.
Recent news that shows effective vaccines are on the horizon means we are approaching what she called “the light at the end of the tunnel.” But she encouraged people to “have compassion for our health care workers” by following health guidelines strictly until those vaccines are released to the public.
Dr. Steve Nemerson, the chief clinical officer at Saint Alphonsus, said that “unless the community radically changes its compliance with masking, social distancing and crowd size limitations within the next four or five weeks,” models show that hospitals can expect to see double the COVID-19 patients by Christmas “and a tripling thereof” by mid-January.
That’s on top of many clinical units already operating at more than 100% capacity, he said. Hospitals may need to repurpose conference rooms and other spaces not traditionally used for clinical care.
He encouraged people to wear face masks properly, covering both the nose and mouth. He also recommended eliminating crowd sizes bigger than 10 and discontinuing social gatherings.
Little last Friday returned Idaho to a modified version of his Stage 2 of the recovery from March’s statewide lockdown. The most prominent feature of the stage rollback is a required limit of 10 people in gatherings.
“We’re very, very concerned about the upcoming holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas, because not only is the virtual spread in social settings — public events, bars, that sort of thing — but we’ve also seen one family getting together with another family as a common spreader event,” Nemerson said.
David Peterman, CEO at Primary Health Medical Group, applauded McLean for being one of the first officials in Idaho to require face masks in July. He recommended limiting the number of people in bars, restaurants in crowded businesses. He asked McLean to enforce the rules already in place.
“I’m asking the public directly to follow the rules, but they don’t always,” he said. “As a public official, you have to do difficult things. If I were to make a recommendation to you, it would be enforcement of the rules you already have in place. The next step is, you’ll be forced to close things.”
McLean said she wanted to avoid another shutdown, saying as she has in the past that she would prefer to target specific areas.
She said that within the week, she expected to have an announcement on city services to help make sure city employees are able to stay healthy while on the job.
Boise has not enforced its own health orders on mask-wearing or social distancing, instead opting time and time again to choose to educate people, just as Little has.
A Boise Police Department spokesperson confirmed last week that the city had not issued any citations directly for not wearing masks or social distancing, although last month two people were arrested for misdemeanor trespassing after refusing to wear a mask at a Central District Health meeting.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 11:35 AM.
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