{"id":50498,"date":"2020-11-11T03:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T10:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/drive-thru-testing-in-montezuma-county-hammered-as-cases-rise\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:51:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:51:38","slug":"drive-thru-testing-in-montezuma-county-hammered-as-cases-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/drive-thru-testing-in-montezuma-county-hammered-as-cases-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"Drive-thru testing in Montezuma County hammered as cases rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=9a380117-87fb-4d17-b0ce-ab2484c60daf&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1347\" alt=\"Southwest Health System medical staff attend to a patient at a drive-thru flu test clinic on the Southwest Memorial Hospital campus in this file photo.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Southwest Health System medical staff attend to a patient at a drive-thru flu test clinic on the Southwest Memorial Hospital campus in this file photo.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Last week, health officials reported 70 new positive cases, representing a positive-test rate of 16%, said Kent Aiken, Southwest Memorial Hospital\u2019s chief of medicine and a physician with the county health department.<\/p>\n<p>Kerri White-Singleton, chief operating officer of the Southwest Medical Group, said Monday that the hospital has seen an increase in the number of COVID-19 patients that show up in the emergency room and require hospitalization.<\/p>\n<p>Aiken and White-Singleton spoke Monday at the<a href=\"https:\/\/the-journal.com\/articles\/193220-mancos-schools-choose-to-keep-inperson-instruction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Mancos school board meeting<\/a>. The board decided to keep in-person learning instead of switching to online instruction, like <a href=\"https:\/\/the-journal.com\/articles\/193139-cortez-schools-to-move-inperson-students-to-online-thursday\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Montezuma-Cortez schools.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>White-Singleton also warned about the possible loss of some hospital services during a coronavirus surge.<\/p>\n<p>If beds at the hospital are taken up by COVID-19 patients, the hospital is less able to provide medical services to someone in a car crash or with broken bones. Those patients are then flown to other hospitals, White-Singleton said.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the new cases are not asymptomatic.<\/p>\n<p>Lindsay Roth of the Montezuma County Public Health Department Public said 90% of the new cases are now \u201cvery symptomatic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hitting people hard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:ehayes@the-journal.com\">ehayes@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Southwest Health System medical staff attend to a patient at a drive-thru flu test clinic on the Southwest Memorial Hospital campus in this file photo.Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal Last week, health officials reported 70 new positive cases, representing a positive-test rate of 16%, said Kent Aiken, Southwest Memorial Hospital\u2019s chief of medicine and a physician with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,21,28,60,445],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87760,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50498\/revisions\/87760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50498"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}