{"id":89705,"date":"2020-03-28T20:37:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T02:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/first-positive-case-of-covid-19-in-montezuma-county\/"},"modified":"2020-03-28T20:37:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T02:37:14","slug":"first-positive-case-of-covid-19-in-montezuma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/first-positive-case-of-covid-19-in-montezuma-county\/","title":{"rendered":"First positive case of COVID-19 in Montezuma County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Illustration
Illustration of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV).<\/span>Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Montezuma County Public Health Department and Southwest Health System on Saturday announced the county\u2019s first positive case of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

According to Southwest Health System, officials were notified of the positive test result Saturday. They then alerted the county\u2019s Public Health Department.<\/p>\n

The county released a statement<\/a> about the case Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe individual resides in Montezuma County,\u201d the statement said. \u201cDue to privacy laws, no more information about the infected individual will be released. Montezuma County Public Health Department is conducting contact tracing according to CDC protocols.\u201d<\/p>\n

Southwest also released a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis result was collected at the SHS drive-up flu clinic, the only testing site in Montezuma County,\u201d the release said. \u201cMontezuma County Public Health Department was immediately notified of the result. They will start their process of interviewing and notifying those who may have had contact with this person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Southwest Health System CEO Tony Sudduth also offered additional details through a video livestream Saturday. He told viewers to remain calm and continue following SHS recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last couple weeks, we\u2019ve been approaching the COVID-19 pandemic with the assumption that there was an active case in Montezuma County,\u201d Sudduth said. \u201cToday we have confirmation that this was an accurate assumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sudduth noted that people who might have been in contact with the infected individual would be contacted by the Health Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Montezuma County Health Department has spoken with the individual, and will determine if there is any potential exposure to others,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom that point, they will notify anyone else as appropriate. So rest assured, anyone determined to be at risk from being in contact with this individual, will be notified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sudduth said the individual was not experiencing \u201csignificant effects\u201d of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich is why we\u2019ve been saying that we think there are active cases in the county, and just did not know that there was the virus with them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Health Department advised residents to \u201ccarefully consider\u201d essential travel and to remain at home as much as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Montezuma County residents should assume that the COVID-19 virus is present in the community, and will continue to spread if people do not adhere to the stay-at home executive order,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Southwest Health System again urged residents to practice social distancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose experiencing symptoms such as fever, cough and shortness of breath should isolate at home, assume they have the virus, and treat their symptoms,\u201d Southwest said .<\/p>\n

For a specific question or concern, residents can call the Southwest COVID-19 patient information line at 564-2201.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Department, Southwest Health System receive word Saturday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,13,28,60,445],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-89705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-frontpage-lead","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\/89705","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=89705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89705"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=89705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}