Blessing Health System employees test positive for COVID-19 amid case surge – WGEM

As COVID-19 cases continue to surge in Adams County, health care providers are figuring out how to operate, knowing that their workers are just as vulnerable as everyone else.

Blessing Health System officials said they are fighting the virus in the hospital and trying to keep everyone safe.

Officials at Blessing Hospital said 24 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 since March and four nurses are currently out of work, after testing positive.

They said the safety of patients and their staff is top of mind, as work to fight a surge of COVID-19 cases in the community.

A nurse at Blessing Hospital takes to Facebook, after she said she tested positive for COVID-19.

“I’m very sick,” Kathleen Yonosik Birsic said in a video. “That’s all I’m going to say, is that I’m very sick.”

In the video, she explains her symptoms.

“It felt like my head was being split open,” Yonosik Birsic said. “My shortness of breath started increasing and the pressure in my chest started feeling worse.”

Blessing Health system CEO and President Maureen Kahn said there are four nurses out of work right now, after testing positive for the virus.

“It’s highly emotional,” Kahn said. “They’re on the front lines, they’re caring for people. We’re giving them everything to protect them and they don’t know how it’s happened.”

Amid a surge of cases in the county and a record-high 17 hospitalizations, officials said precautions are in place to protect patients and the people on the front lines.

“When we do have employees that we identify as sick, our infection prevention team quickly identifies them,” Blessing Health System Chief of Medicine Chris Solaro said. “They figure out whether they need to be tested or not and if so, they go home, we use CDC guidelines to see if they need to stay home from work and when they can return.”

Blessing Health System Chief Nursing Officer Tim Tranor said they did cross training with staff early on to prevent a nurse shortage, if they were to see a surge.

“If we have to isolate staff from an exposure standpoint, we do have the ability to pull staff from other areas to kind of cross cover into those,” Tranor said.

Kahn said every person who enters the hospital is screened at the door and required to wear a mask, bed-side employees wear face shields and they have enough personal protective equipment for all employees.

Those working on the front lines leave the community with one message.

“We all need to have empathy to think of others, besides ourselves,” Yonosik Birsic said in a video. “Wear a mask or stay home.”

Kahn said all staff members who test positive to go into isolation and follow the CDC guidelines before returning to work.

Kahn says as of Monday, 17 people are in the hospital.

Three of those patients are in critical care and 14 are in the medical surgical units.

She said two patients are currently on ventilators, and they have about 30 ventilators if they would need them.