Norwalk officials seek to reassure, prepare Ebola-wary public

NORWALK, Conn. – Hours of training have gone into preparing Norwalk Hospital and Norwalk first responders for a potential case of Ebola here, Norwalk officials said Wednesday.

If you’re getting a routine medical procedure in Norwalk in the near future you can expect to be asked an unusual question – have you been to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea within the last three weeks?

That is just one of the measures to help prevent the possible spread of Ebola that were outlined by in the poorly attended informational seminar held in Concert Hall. It was a case of more chiefs than Indians – only four people who were not press or connected with the town hall-like event sat in the largely empty cavernous room.

Ebola Public QA

“We have been spreading messaging in a number of different ways for about two weeks now. That includes face to face meetings, social media, media releases,” said Western Connecticut Health Network Director of Public and Government Relations Andrea Rynn. “We’ve been meeting with public health city officials. You know, I had a reporter say to me today that she felt the environment was over-saturated with information. That coupled with the fact that it’s a rainy, windy night. But we’re happy to have the people who are here.”

Mayor Harry Rilling said he trusted that reporters would spread the word. “It’s still going to get the word out and that’s what the intention was,” Rilling said.

Rilling also had advice for the public: Get a flu shot. “The flu has symptoms similar to what you might experience if you had been exposed to Ebola. If everybody gets their flu shots and they minimize the symptoms that they have, perhaps people might not be as concerned,” Rilling said.

Norwalk Hospital Infection Control Coordinator Erin Fitzgerald said the hospital has had two drills, one with a simulated Ebola patient coming in by ambulance and one with a walk-in patient. There are daily Ebola meetings, she said.

“We’ve really been practicing it and doing research and planning since the beginning of August when we started first hearing about the Ebola outbreak in Africa,” Fitzgerald said. “Obviously, we have ramped up our training and education with the patient coming into the United States but we stay in a continuous state of readiness by continuously training our staff, staying up to date with the CDC guidelines that are changing on a seemingly regular basis – they came out with some new guidelines yesterday, so we are training our staff up to those guidelines.”

All patients are being asked if they have been to Guinea, Sierra Leone or Libera within the last 21 days. If the answer is yes, they are asked if they have a fever. Two yeses lands a patient in an isolation area, and an infectious disease doctor is called.

“If you were to come to Norwalk Hospital to have a routine mammogram, they will ask you those same questions, or if you come in for a routine colonoscopy, the first thing they are going to ask you is have you traveled to West Africa within the last 21 days,” Fitzgerald said. “… Anywhere you go in the Norwalk Hospital system and hopefully within any of the private physician offices, those will be the first screening questions that you will be asked. That is one of the ways that we will keep the disease in check will be to make sure we screen.”

Deputy Norwalk Police Chief David Wrinn said dispatchers are asking the same questions when they take calls. Personal protection kits have been placed in all police vehicles, he said.

Fitzgerald said hospital staff are being trained in the proper manner of donning and doffing protective gear, otherwise known as PPEs.

“We spend a lot of time, hours and hours and hours, training with our staff members from positions to nurses, to our care techs, to our radiology techs, to our housekeepers, anybody who may have to come in contact with that patient needs to know how to don and doff PPEs correctly,” Fitzgerald said. “We are stressing the safety of our staff members for sure when they take care of our patients.”

Deputy Director of Emergency Management Michele DeLuca said her department realizes how stressful it is for people, given that, “If you turn on any of the 24/7 news channels, it’s the theme music, the logos, and all they are talking about is Ebola.” Residents need to keep things in perspective and make sure they get information from reliable sources such as CDC.gov, she said.

On Wednesday, Gov. Dannel Malloy announced that information is available at www.ct.gov/ebola

DeLuca stressed the importance of getting information out to the community.

Norwalk Branch NAACP President Darnell Crosland said he was there to make sure that information gets out to his community, as there are suspicions in Texas that Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan did not get the treatment that a white person would have gotten.

“When people are getting paranoid, when stuff like this happens, sometimes when they don’t have the proper information, we can find ourselves with a whole another situation,” Crosland said. “… There’s a lot of things that go into what type of treatment an individual may get.”

Norwalk Fire Chief Denis McCarthy said everyone who might come into contact with a potential patient is being trained, although drills have not taken place yet.

“This process I think is very valuable for everyone. We hope that we will never have to experience the skills that we are learning but it is a very good process because this is the type of emergencies that we will be called to for the rest of our careers, for the rest of your lives,” McCarthy said. “… It’s good to understand how to get information, how to protect yourself and how to react to anxiety provoking events. This is good training or all of us. We hope that we will never have to use what we learn but it makes us better prepared for some event that may come with less warning.”