Garwin Brown, president of Heywood Healthcare, which oversees both Heywood Hospital in Gardner and Athol Hospital, said in a briefing Thursday that the health care provider has thus far tested 59 individuals for the COVID-19 virus. Of those 17 have come back negative, with the balance still pending.
Brown said there have been no positive findings Gardner, Athol, or surrounding communities to date.
In his YouTube briefing, Brown said, “We have testing services available at Heywood Urgent Care in downtown Gardner, and at Tully Walk-in Care. If you have symptoms — flu-like symptoms — you can present there, by screened, triaged, and then go through a testing regime if you qualify for that. We do have testing kits available, but they are in very limited supply.”
“I also want to give a shout-out to A&E Environmental, Dianne Hubbard and her team, who have worked with our facilities team so that Watkins 1, one of our principal in-patient units (at Heywood Hospital), in four hours can go fully negative pressure, which is huge for us should we have a huge influx of patients testing positive for COVID-19. That is just a wonderful thing.”
Brown also noted that visitation restrictions have been tightened at the hospitals.
“We have really tightened down on visitation in the hospitals for patients who arrive with someone,” he said. “So, just pay attention to that. If you’re coming or bringing someone for an appointment, please know that you might be asked to stay in your car and wait for that appointment to be finished. It’s for an abundance of caution that we’re doing that.”
Even seemingly insignificant details are being addressed.
“We have just gotten several thousand single-use pens in,” said Brown. “I know that a lot of people have to sign documents when they arrive here, and we don’t want those pens back. So, we’ve done that at the request of staff.”
Brown also thanked Whipps Inc. in Athol and Brian’s Auto Body in Gardner for donating several hundred protective masks for hospital staff.
“I’ve just put a call out to any other companies in our region that use N95 masks and any other personal protective equipment,” he said. “If they want to get in touch with us and share some of that with us that would be fantastic because our supplies here and all across the commonwealth are just incredibly tight. I just got off a conference call with hospitals across Massachusetts and it is such a dire situation, making sure that we have enough for our staff and our patients. If anyone has any in stock that they can share, please call my office at (978) 630-6223 and will work with you to see how we can get those to our different healthcare providers.
“I appreciated all the work everybody is doing to keep our communities well and safe.”