A COVID-19 outbreak at Santa Rosa (Calif.) Memorial Hospital is linked to at least 17 employee infections, according to The Press Democrat.
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital officials said the first cases for staff members appeared in early August, and CEO Tyler Hedden announced the outbreak Aug. 29 in a staff memo, the newspaper reported. At the time the memo was sent out, 13 employees had contracted COVID-19. That count had increased to 17 as of Aug. 31.
The hospital did not disclose Sept. 1 whether additional employee infections were confirmed. An official with one of the unions representing workers told The Press Democrat that workers were told the outbreak may have affected as many as 200 workers. Santa Rosa Memorial has about 2,000 employees.
The outbreak, which has at least in part been linked to the hospital's general surgery area, has reportedly sparked concerns among some hospital employees regarding hospital transparency about the infections and how the hospital is handling of the situation.
Memorial hospital officials said Sept. 1 it is following county public health and CDC guidelines to address the outbreak and taking all possible steps to prevent more workers from infection, according to The Press Democrat.
"We are at 75 percent of our initial wave of testing that we have done for those caregivers on that [general surgery] unit," said Chad Krilich, CMO of the hospital's operator, Providence St. Joseph Health, the newspaper reported.
Read the full report here.
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