NORFOLK, Va. — In light of concerns about coronavirus, Sentara Healthcare created a task force to monitor the virus.
So far, five people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus named 2019-nCoV. Tuesday afternoon, doctors still were waiting on test results of someone in Northern Virginia. Tests on two other people in Virginia were negative.
The outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China spread to a number of international locations. As of Tuesday, more than 100 people in China had died because of the virus. More than 4,500 were infected.
People with Sentara said no one has come into their facilities with the coronavirus, but they have steps in place they can take if somebody in our area does become infected.
“It’s evolving, and it’s a new thing. People are trying to understand what does it mean for me, what do a it mean for my family,” said Sentara’s Chief Quality and Safety Officer, Joel Bundy.
The Sentara Healthcare task force includes experts from several different departments.
Mundy said, “The world is very mobile which is why why we are trying to prepare, and we are ready to take care of those patients if they show up in one of our physician facilities, the hospital, emergency department, or in one of our practices.”
Bundy said flyers in doctors' offices and the hospitals will make sure people know the symptoms of the coronavirus. Those symptoms include mild to moderate upper-respiratory illness, like the common cold.
Bundy said the cronovirus risk is low in the United States, but washing your hands is the best way and one of the easiest to protect against it.
As for Sentara, he said the healthcare system rather would be over-prepared than under-prepared.
“We need to make sure our people are educated. We want to make sure we understand. We are looking at pharmacy, we are looking at materials management and making sure we have physicians who understand,” he explained.