HVCS management and our entire staff are concerned about the novel Coronavirus and the risk to our clients. According to Dr. Angela Hulse, Medical Director at Cornerstone Family Healthcare (our future merger partner):

“The CDC has stated that people currently at risk for the virus are those that have traveled abroad, and those who have a fever and a cough. Individuals who are healthy [for 14 consecutive] days (the incubation period) post exposure are deemed uninfected. Those most at risk for serious complications from the virus are those who are immunocompromised, the very young and the elderly, and those with chronic medical conditions, including HIV.

Handwashing is the best method to prevent transmission of the virus. Soap and water are preferable to Purell or other hand sanitizers.

If you have a cough or a fever, DO NOT go to work, and you should call your doctor. Stay home, rest and call your doctor if you have fever and a cough.

Unless there is a change in the direction we get from the CDC, go about your regular lives, wash your hands, and stay home if you get sick.”

NY State’s governor and the mayor of NYC issued a joint statement which you can read here and which confirms the information above:

11:13 a.m., March 2, 2020

N.Y. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wants 1,000 tests per day, encourages people to go about their lives

The morning after New York health officials announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sat down next to health experts and delivered a very clear message to the people of New York: “Go about your lives.”

“I get the emotion, I understand it,” Cuomo (D) said. “I’m a native born New Yorker. We live with anxiety, but the facts don’t back it up here.

“There is no doubt that there will be more cases where we find people who test positive,” Cuomo told reporters at the news conference. “This is New York. We’re the gateway to the world — of course we’re going to have it here.”

Cuomo emphasized that the symptoms are like a cold or the flu and, for most people, they treat themselves and it resolves. Both Cuomo and de Blasio (D) encouraged [healthy]  people to go to work, use public transit and to not worry about contracting the illness, which they fully expect to spread through the community.

De Blasio urged New Yorkers to take health precautions, such as “covering your mouth when you sneeze … washing your hands frequently.” And he encouraged people to go to a doctor or health-care facility right away if they think they might have the coronavirus.

The 39-year-old woman who tested positive in New York is a health-care worker who arrived on a flight from Iran on Tuesday night, Cuomo said. “Our best info is she was not contagious” when she was on the flight or in the car on the way home, he said, but officials are contacting other passengers from the flight and the driver of her car “out of an abundance of caution.”

Cuomo said they are working under the assumption that her husband is positive, too. Both the woman and her husband are staying at home because their symptoms are not severe.

Cuomo said that their main challenge is testing as many people as possible, so they know who has been exposed and they can work to contain the spread. Given that, “we are mobilizing with private labs around the state,” he said. “I’d like to have a goal of 1,000 tests per day capacity within a week, because the more testing the better.”

The NYS Department of Health has set up an informational web page at: https://health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/coronavirus/