Skip to main content
U.K. Edition
Thursday, 28 March 2024

Huntsville, Madison County leaders discuss area coronavirus cases

Credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL
Duration: 0 shares 2 views

Huntsville, Madison County leaders discuss area coronavirus cases
Huntsville, Madison County leaders discuss area coronavirus cases
Huntsville, Madison County leaders discuss area coronavirus cases

>> pat simon: we're interrupting local program to go bring you the very latest in our madison and huntsville response to the coronavirus.

>> maria waxel: they are doing their daily news briefing.

Let's go ahead and listen in live p.

>> mr. birdwell: dr. karen landers from the alabama department of public health, mayor paul finley, city of madison, and lieutenant general edward daily from redstone arsenal.

Again, you will note that we are sitting six feet apart corgz cdc guidelines and our own best practices to separate and sanitize.

Currently there are 567 confirmed cases in the state of al a.d there are 44 confirmed cases in madison county which includes one death confirmed in madison county.

We continue to monitor the situation and respond accordingly.

With that said i'll turn it over to dr. karen landers from the department of public health.

>> dr. landers: sorry, turn the microphone on.

Thank you very much.

Again, as our partnership continues with the madison county huntsville city and other leaders we want to continue our updates regarding the status in the state of alabama.

Certainly as was just mentioned, we have 44 cases in madison county.

I do want to spend just a moment talking about when we have a case reported to us.

Cases are reported to us either through positive testing from our clinical laboratories or commercial labs which are required to report to us within four hours of receiving a positive test.

Once we receive a positive test of a person for covid-19 the alabama departmnt of public health immediately instituteds an investigative procedure which means we talk to the person with the positive test and we determine information related to contacts so that we can get in touch with persons who potentially might have been exposed to the covid-19.

Again, that's a fairly lengthy process but i wanted to let you know the alabama department of public health investigates each of these cases and we have all of our team involved in this investigation statewide.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, can you hear me okay now?

Another issue i want to bring forth because i've had a lot of questions about it is as we've seen a dramatic rise in numbers of cases in the state of alabama in the last week.

Now, part of that information of course is related to ongoing testing.

An additional part of that is reminding us that laboratories may have a backlog of getting uy i'll go to mayor finley next.

>> mr. birdwell: thank you, dr. landers.

Mayor.

>> mayor finley: on behalf of mayor tommy battle and chairman dale strong and the madison county commission and our city council, i want to first thank e.m.a.

And the alabama department of public health and then the governor's office.

One of the reasons that we continue to see these steps being taken and especially with what the governor talked about at 11:00 is because we are constantly in communication, sharing what we've seen, what they've seen, and trying to make the best absolute decisions that we can for this madison county community.

And i'm really proud to be a part of that team.

One of the things that mayor battle and i both want to you know is city halls are still open.

We're still sing in all aspects.

But you guys have listened to us one of the things we ask is we try to do as much of this as we can online or via the phone.

And because of that, i think we're in a position now we can scale back a little bit, especially with some of the things that just came out from the governor's office.

And so with non-essential employees, the ability to work from home, we're going to be utilizing that over the next couple of weeks.

City hall will still be open and fully functioning, but there's less need for that amount of people and we're working together with our department heads on that.

We had the decision yesterday on the schools and i can just tell you that there's a lot of folks out there with seniors that are just -- they're devastated.

And you guys, you know, even with general daly, you know him as a general.

I know him as a dad with a senior who thank goodness has a scholarship to go to the next level and can play baseball.

But the reality of it is there are a lot of kids that are hurting.

We want you to know, we understand that and it may seem small to a lot of us that are dealing with this covid-19 situation, but it means something to these parents and there's a lot of folks out there and we're thinking about you.

But with that said, i can tell you that we are so proud of our superintendents and our school board and so appreciative of them because we have game plans moving forward.

And these teachers are absolutely ready to make a difference for your kids.

We don't manage that in city government.

We support them when it comes to infrastructure.

But i can tell you listening to their game plans we're going to be fine in madison county.

We're going to come out of this stronger.

I'm so proud of our school systems and i can't wait to see what they continue to do.

One of the things that has continued that we're all trying to realize is what does this federal stimulus mean and again, our madison chamber of commerce, the huntsville-madison county chamber of commerce continue to do everything that they can to decipher what's in there to help businesses understand how they might be able to utilize that.

And they're having zoom meetings , they're giving guidance to all of their members we're a part of that each and every day and we'll continue to do that to help our businesses dma navigate through this really tough situation.

And i'll end by talking about social distancing in the next couple of weeks.

You know, we've shut down a lot more things via the state level, but it's still our responsibility to social distance.

Six feet apart and a lot of that's going to come now because the weather is so good finally that we're able to go out some on our greenways and some of our parks.

And this community has done an incredible job of distancing.

And i want us to continue to focus on that.

We have a responsibility and we can continue to make a difference.

So i ask you to rches continue to sanitize and to wash your hands, to continue to social distance and separate as you can and, you know, basically comes down to essential activities only.

If you don't have to be out, please don't.

If we continue to do that for the next 10 to 14 days, we're flattening the curve and we come out of this that much more quickly.

So with that said, you can go to huntsvilleal.gov, madisonal.gov and continue to obtain information and jeff, that's all i have at this point.

>> mr. birdwell: thank you, mayor.

Now we'll go to lieutenant general daly from redstone arsenal.

>> gen.

Daly: good afternoon and to jeff birdwell, i know you facilitate these discussions every day.

I really appreciate your leadership, both here and at e.

M.a.

As a director.

Also thanks to dr. landers and to paul finley for being here today.

And your comments are actually great.

And we echo them at redstone.

On behalf of the leaders at redstone arsenal for the second consecutive week i'd like to provide you with an update on the status of all the actions we're taking to mitigate and combat covid-19.

As paul finley just mentioned we continue to work closely with the team and it is collaborative in nature and so between chairman strong, mayors finley and battle, dr. hudson at crestwood, mr. spillers at huntsville, and their teams, all of the local, city, and state representatives and officials, it is great to be part of this team where we're taking what i would believe are active and really proactive measures to prevent the spread of the virus and reduce the risk to the population.

I personally spoke with the governor's office this week and we're also plugged in at the state level.

And the covid-19 task force efforts going forward.

And you all know, i would be remiss if i didn't mention those on the front line involved in fighting this virus in tennessee valley.

Medical personnel, emergency service providers, these are the unsung heroes doing phenomenal work each and every day.

As mayor finley just mentioned, the eds indicators and the school systems that are involved in attacking this problem.

As many of you know, redstone arsenal is a federal center of excellence.

71 plus different subordinate tenant organizations on redstone and so i would just tell you to start off with that they're taking measures to adjust our actions based on the guidance and directives from the department of the army, the department of defense, nasa, and the department of justice.

Forequick points.

The leaders on redstone are making calculated, deliberate and informed decisions to three end states.

Protect the force, prevent the spread of virus in the tennessee valley, and accomplish our critical missions in defense.

Rest assured to everyone listening here, we're extremely serious about the actions we're taking as this virus is dangerous, it's contagious, and it's indiscriminate.

I mentioned last week that if we close redstone arsenal first of all would be unnecessary at this point but it also would be irresponsible.

Today we're at security critical missions with 35%, give or take, of our workforce physically coming to work.

The remaining 45,000 personnel are executing their duties using workforce flexibilities like teleworking.

And i did want to provide you just a couple of examples of the mission critical efforts that we're undertaking as we speak.

Nasa's made -- marshall space flight center continues to sustain astronauts in the international space station done from the payload integrated operation center on redstone arsenal.

Army tear yell command is in the covid-19 response efforts distributing safety of our workforce but the tennessee valley.

We'll continue to keep our workforce updated through the updates, through media, and then also through direct communication and supervisors.

And the supervisors are really the first line of defense to talk to our workforce and keep them informed of what's going on and finally, we are absolutely confident not only in our current actions but our planning with regard to emergency response.

Thank you, and i look forward to your questions.

>> mr. birdwell: thank you, general daly.

Thank you for watching today.

We will be back tomorrow at noon with another daily briefing.

Until then, critical updates will be posted to the city of huntsville's covid-19 web page as well as the websites of our other partners here today.

Stay safe, stay separate, and remember to sanitize.

With that being said, we will take some questions.

Again, as you come to the microphone, please identify yourself and who you are affiliated with.

Also, we will allow one question and a follow-up.

And again, please limit your questions to two.

>> mayor finley, this is for you , chris joseph waff.

In light of birmingham's shelter in place order, tuscaloosa's 24- hour curfew, and the governor saying this morning that she is giving local leaders full permission to created stringent, more stringent guidelines, what has the nature of the conversation between yourself, mayor battle, and chairman strong as to how to move forward on a potential shell -- shelter in place order.

>> mayor finley: sure, before i defer to dr. landers to give a little more detail, the key piece is communication on a daily bay daily bay suss.

As you saw today t communication we've had with the governor's office with adph that came out with an entirely new set of more stringent guidelines on what could and couldn't be open.

We're kind of down now to public places.

I think part of what we'll continue to watch for this weekend is how well we do with that.

The perfect example is playgrounds, greenways.

If we're social distancing when we're out, not congregating together, then we're doing the right thing.

One of the things i know post of us talked about, all three of us talked about with chairman strong, is, you know, we'll use our police department, and our recreation department as we go to the parks to do as mayor battle was saying, are we doing the social distancing piece of that.

We're working with our hospitals because the biggest thing we were trying to do is not overwhelm our emergency rooms. and, you know, in this case so much of what we've done previously and through today have accomplished that.

We recognize there's going to be more, but i think collaborative ly working with adp h and this entire team, we're going to continue to look at our respective situations.

You've seen over the course of the last couple of days and weeks as we get more information we've made more things happen.

So chris, i think right now we're very cogny cognizant of continue to go do what's best for our community and as we continue to take the steps you continue to see us have less and less opportunity for more and more people to get together.

>> speaking to law enforcement, obviously the governor just dropped down a mandate.

How have law enforcement agenc ies maybe been working with you guys?

What's been your message about how they plan to enforce those measures?

>> mayor finley: i thought chief mcmurray did a great job of representing what we're trying to do out there.

In most instances and a perfect example is today, there's an entirely new list, and i have a temporary list here, of folks that after 5:00 tomorrow be asked not to be open.

Many instances all we have to do is help them understand the guidelines, not enforce something.

So so much of that is communication that we'll continue to do.

It's also recreational.

One of the things is playground equipment versus being on a playground or walking on a greenway.

So it's not necessarily enforcement.

It's communication.

We'll continue to do that.

And that's the best way we've accomplished that so far.

>> i'm dallas parker with whnt.

A question for dr. landers.

If people are waiting beyond the window, the period for isolation , how could they call for result?

What's the phone number for that is there any specific details they need to know?

>> dr. landers: okay, dallas, thank you very much.

As we know, as testing has increased, both of the bureau of clinical laboratories with the alabama department of public health and various commercial laboratories, as numbers have increased often people having tests, so has the time to be able to report that test back.

The alabama department of public health at this point continues to strive fora less than 96-hour turnaround for our tests done at the bureau of clinical laboratories.

And what we have done is as soon as our test goes into our electronic portal, physicians who ordered those tests or hospitals who ordered those test cans go straight to our electronic portal and look at those results.

Again, certainly the positives take priorities.

But again, we ask the providers to register on our electronic portal to be able to get the results of their patients or if they were done through the emergency room to get those results.

Again, they will receive a hard copy, but within the time that the b.c.l.

Runs the test, the result goes into our electronic portal in two hours.

So we do know there are people that are waiting for their tests now, you ask about if i've waited longer than this period of time and i still dojtd have my test.

Well again, i would recommend that persons check back with their provider or the hospital, whomever ordered their test, to determine where that test was sent.

Again t bureau of clinical laboratories, we have our testing through the state health department viewing through our electronic portal.

For commercial labs, they send their results back to either the facility or the physicians's office stlu their various mechanisms. i was aware that one of the commercial labs had a longer backlog and they're trying to shorten that.

So i would recommend persons check back with their provider who ordered that test.

Thank you.

>> thank you.

And my general question is just, in our area how many people are we having in the hospital right now awaiting those results or maybe on ventilators?

>> dr. landers: dallas, i do not have the exact numbers because we have the facilities here, the madison campus of huntsville as well as the huntsville campus itself, huntsville main and then also the crestwood opt.

So i do not have that information in front of me.

Jeff, do you have that?

>> mr. birdwell: i do not have the complete set of numbers.

But what we were told in our conference call today as far as inpatients with -- that have tested positive, huntsville hospital has five and crestwood hospital doesn't have any.

>> thank you.

>> mayor finley, paul gattis from al.com.

I just wanted to follow up a little bit about what chris was asking about, about the shelter in place.

Whether you and mayor battle and chairman strong, when y'all have your discussions and talk out the best practices, the best way to move forward, could you explain a little bit about the balance between wanting to be proactive and also being re active to what you see?

>> mayor finley: great question.

I think it's one where the balance is always there and we continue to talk about it each and every day.

With that said, you know, what i've seen and what we talk about is talking to the health care professionals as far as what do we need to do to not overwhelm our emergency rooms and to obviously not overwhelm our hospitals.

And you can see teledoc and so many of the things we have put in place are minimizing the need to go to the emergency rooms. and then when it comes to the level that we have in the hospitals right now, jeff just talked about five.

You know, we -- we continue to see that this community's doing an incredible job.

The more tests we have, if we get to the point -- i guess it just comes back to it's a fluid situation that we will continue tow work with the health care authorities and if we felt like we needed to take the next step, we would.

One of the things that came out of that, paul, and i think when the governor takes this list and again, there's that many more folks that after 5:00 tomorrow will not be open, that's taking direct feedback from this community and asking for us to continue to minimize the opportunity for folks to get together.

And if we'll stay six feet apart , continue to social distance, wash our hands.

If we see that that's going to continue and the trend stays about where it is, we'll cannot continue the process as we have if that changes, i can assure you each and every one of us is concerned about the health of our citizens and we would make adjustments as we needed to.

>> and dr. landers, mayor finler finley a second ago said you may want to speak to the concept of sheltering in place or -- i'm just curious what kind of advice is adph giving to cities and communities about strategies to mitigate the spread and just what could you tell us about that?

>> dr. landers: well, first of all, to follow up on that question bring reminding everyone that this has been a very close communication.

In fact, in madison county, huntsville city, we started discussing this several weeks ago.

So this has been something that has been ongoing.

In many communities including this community, and speak to go that issue, i think we have to remember that we're all still safer at home.

Those of us who don't need to be out, again some of us are essential health care workers or community leaders and so we have to be out, but also be models for social distancing and be models for respiratory hygiene.

So in terms of the guidance that we are giving again the state health officer has issued new orders today in coordination with the governor's office and literally i believe jeff has a copy of those in front of him.

But my guidance to people would be as we talk about sheltering in place,if we're following these orders we're really safer at home already and we've actually already done that.

And again, i think that is where once we stay apart we're going to stay together to just use some phrases that i have heard.

But the ongoing discussions are as we continue to refine the process to stay in touch with your community leaders and to stay in touch with our health care leaders, to stay in touch with our e.m.a.s and health department continue to go provide the guidance as the state health officer has today.

Thank you.

>> mr. birdwell: i will add to that, we just got the state health orders before we walked over here.

So we have posted that link to our website, madison county ema .com.

>> sydney martin with channel 31 my question's for mayor finley.

We keep talking about the shelter in place.

Where in this discussion do you guys draw the line?

We've had one death here in madison county now.

Other counties who are doing this haven't had any deaths but have far more cases.

>> mayor finley: you know, i guess the answer to your question is when we need to.

You know, when we need to continue to take the next step, we will.

I recognize there's been three questions on that because in essence it's the ambiguity of what's right and what's wrong.

You know, we continue to defer to adph, to our medical professionals each and every day when you're in this situation, our goal is to take care of our citizens in all facets, in all aspects wh.

We need to do that, conferring with them, i can assure you, we will take the next level.

The pieces that adph just put in place help us as a community continue to navigate through this.

So it's a great question and it's one that we struggle with each and every day to get the right answer.

But i think in this case we'll defer to them and then if we need to take the next step, we will.

>> i don't know who's best to answer this next question, if it's mr. birdwell or dr. landers , so if you can let me move my cam are once you know with this death in madison county, i know we have four people p hospitalized with coronavirus, now we're at five.

Was this person hospitalized?

Where are they at?

Can you provide that detail?

>> mr. birdwell: i'll have to defer that to dr. landers.

>> dr. landers: thank you for that question.

First of all t alabama department of public health wants to acknowledge that this person has passed away.

We want to extend our sympathy toss the family and friends of this person.

And we're very, very sorry that a person has passed away due to covid-19.

Dwiew to privacy issues related to patients, the alabama department of public health only indicates the county of residence for any deaths.

Again, that is due to our policies on confidentiality and privacy.

So i'm unable to discuss specifically details related to this patient.

What i can say as part of this is i want to remind everyone that each of us has a responsibility here.

And as i spoke to last week, you know, i'm a health care provider my family actually lives in the huntsville community and my daughter's an emergency room physician in another state.

So every one of us either in our careers or as a citizen of the state of alabama or just a member of society can take our own measures to reduce the spread of this virus in order to protect persons that are more vulnerable to this such as persons with underlying health conditions or persons that are in an older age group.

So i want to stress that again any death is tragic and, you know, we certainly are very sorry that this happened.

But at the same time, let's try to do all we can to further reduce the spread of this virus.

Thank you.

>> mr. birdwell: at this point we will conclude this press conference.

Thank everybody for coming.

>> pat simon: okay, through go.

They're just wrapping up another week and they have one more to go for tomorrow.

We're talking about these officials you've been watching the last 30 minutes from madison county to include huntsville and also mayor finley from madison city.

All of that area to include we saw twice this morning dr. karen landers with the alabama department of public health.

And again, giving her condolence s, marie, to the families from lauderdale that lost a loved one to coronavirus and here in madison county as well.

>> maria waxel: you could hear from the questions in the room to those officials there on the panel, they were forced to react really quickly because those new health guidelines, that new health order was released just moments before they walked into that room.

So they were still trying to gather their sthawts -- thoughts , understand what exactly is in that order.

It is very, very large.

And we've got it broken down for you right now online at waay tv .com.

So they're trying to process it all, how it comes into play within madison county.

And to answer our questions and many of your questions at home.

An interesting point, too, we were also able to hear about the impacts of response happening over on redstone arsenal, pat.

>> pat simon: that's right.

General daly was talking about, it's -- it's so -- everything comes back home to all of us, right?

A family member, you heard dr. karen landers talking about family and so on.

General daly, he's got a senior in high school right now and they're having to deal with now the students having to stay home and stay home for schooling all the rest of this -- of the year.

But what about those seniors graduating this year?

So mayor finley talked about that.

General daly touched on that a little bit because he has a high school senior family member.

He also mentioned they're going to continue -- these are military terms, end state which means in military terms the ultimate goal that you want to achieve.

Protecting the force at redstone preventing the spread of the coronavirus and also continuing those essential critical missions like marshall space flight center supporting the astronauts.

Also those critical missions taking place supporting the troops out in afghanistan and iraq as well.

He also mentioned those much- needed services like fox health pharmacy, right?

Also the p.x.

Which is the post exchange out at redstone arsenal and the commissary which people buy their food, all their groceries and so on there.

That is still open out there at redstone arsenal.

He talked about a number of other things.

But bottom line he says look, you have a lot of people working from home.

35% are still on redstone arsenal doing those critical missions there.

>> maria waxel: and he did say there are 13 redstone arsenal employees that have tested positive for coronavirus.

Those employees are counted within the alabama department of public health in their respected counties in which they live because they do live and commute in our surrounding counties.

>> pat simon: but he did say of that, of the 353 families on redstone arsenal, none of those so far have tested positive.

Just there are 13 redstone employees that have tested positive.

>> maria waxel: so they will have another news briefing tomorrow, that is saturday at 12:00 noon with the very latest with all those top leaders from madison county.

They've been switching off and on.

And of course our next newscast is coming your way at 4:00.

And for the latest headlines 24/ 7 on coronavirus and more, you

You might like

Related news coverage

Advertisement

More coverage