Coronavirus Update
Cases of positive COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the Tribal community, and the region.
To help stop the spread of the virus, Tribal Health staff are doing contact tracing and investigations of each positive case of COVID-19 within the Tribal Health patient group.
Contact tracing is when public health and/or community health nurses try to find out any additional people who may have been exposed to a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.
People are considered exposed to the virus, when they have been less than 6 feet from an infected person, for longer than 15 minutes.
Individuals who are at risk of catching the virus due to this exposure, are then called by the nurses on the phone. This process of figuring out who may have been exposed, asking them to quarantine, and assessing them for symptoms is called contact tracing.
The contact tracing investigations and notification process is taking Tribal Health approximately 24-48 hours.
At Tribal Health, Community Health nurses are leading the contact tracing work, in cooperation with Lake County Public Health nurses.
If you are called by a nurse as part of contact tracing, you will be provided with the following information:
- Date of potential exposure
- How long you should quarantine
- What symptoms to watch for
- When to test for the virus (usually 5-7 days from known exposure date)
- Where to go for testing
Please note, due to HIPAA rules on privacy, nurses cannot identify individuals who are already infected with the virus.
Tribal Health will continue to provide COVID-19 testing to the public when possible. Though if someone develops symptoms, they should call their primary health care provider immediately to get more directions.
Currently public COVID-19 testing is also available at the following sites. As always during this pandemic, no walk-ins are offered right now. Please call ahead for more directions.
- St. Lukes Hospital
107 6th Ave SW
Ronan, MT 59864
Phone (406) 676-4441
- Providence St. Joseph Medical Center
6 Thirteen Avenue East
Polson, MT 59860
Phone (406) 883-5680
More resources
Tribal Health website
Montana Department of Health and Human Services (DPHHS) site:
https://dphhs.mt.gov/publichealth/cdepi/diseases/coronavirusmt/demographics
Lake County - CSKT Unified Command Center:
Lake County Public Health Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/Lake-County-Public-Health-Montana-346387957374/
Lake County Public Health website:
June 17, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Robert McDonald
Unified Command Center (UCC) Public Information Officer (PIO)
Mobile: 406-249-1818
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Lake County-CSKT Unified Command Center (UCC) – The Lake County Health Department, following up on an earlier case that had been reported as a presumptive positive COVID-19 case, reported Wednesday that the case came back as negative.
Presumptive positives are based on a less-reliable fast test. Confirmations are done with a more reliable lab test. Lake County remains at nine lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases.
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