Chief Medical Officer for the Wind River Reservation Paul J. Ebbert, MD shared the following update and recommendations today, November 10th.
A message from Paul J. Ebbert, MD…To all tribal members,
As most of you know COVID-19 cases are exploding in the State of Wyoming. On Friday, the state had almost 1,000 new cases and had over 700 new cases on Sunday. In the last two weeks, we’ve had over 140 cases a week on the Wind River Reservation. Fremont County is also experiencing a large increase in cases.
By now you know that the Northern Arapaho Tribe has decided to close its offices and the casino again to combat the spread of the disease. All tribal members should go back into the stay-at-home order mode that we were in March and April. You should stay home and only go out for food and medical care. It does no good to close down the tribe if everyone is still running around the community on and off the reservation.
Most of our recent spread has been through family contacts. This includes birthday parties, Halloween parties, drinking parties, baby showers and all other gatherings that we do to socialize. Some of our worst cases have come just from visiting other family members who live in a different household.
You should try to limit your contacts to your immediate household as much as possible, meaning the people you actually live with. Anytime you are outside that immediate household or anytime you let anyone into your household for whatever reason everyone should be wearing a mask. We have made the point many times that we have multigenerational households. We need to protect vulnerable tribal members like elders and those who have chronic diseases. The way we do that is by staying home, wearing a mask and only going out for food or medical care.
If you are sick in any way even though it seems minor, do not go to work. If you are sick you should isolate yourself within your household, stay in your room and wear a mask anytime you are around other family members.
The clinic is ramping up its testing. We will be testing from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Arapahoe Clinic and are also opening up the ECT clinic for testing during the same hours. Ending at 1 p.m. allows us to process all the tests and get them to the state in time. I know everybody wants a rapid test but we do not have enough rapid tests and they’re reserved for certain situations. If you are quarantined, the negative test does not get you out of quarantine any sooner. If you have already had a positive test, the recommendation is to not test you again for 90 days.
The state has been very helpful with testing. However, the county has given up on contact tracing and turned it over to the state. The state is stretched beyond their capacity when it comes to contact tracing. This means that we are on our own when it comes to controlling the virus on the reservation. We all need to work together to try and protect our elders, our families and ourselves. I know everyone is tired but this has gotten much more serious than it has been for a while. So please stay home, wear your mask and if you are sick get tested and stay away from work and especially from Elders.
The good news is that vaccines are on their way and if we work hard now to keep our cases down, there is hope in sight.
Paul J. Ebbert, MD Chief Medical Officer
**Please note: Fort Washakie IHS is now conducting COVID-19 testing on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon for those who show no symptoms. Contact tracing testing will be done Mon., Tues., Wed., and Fridays from 9 a.m. to noon. For more information call 307-335-5988.