Adirondack Health CEO Sylvia Getman speaks at a meeting on coronavirus at the Lake Placid Conference Center in March. (Enterprise photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

LAKE PLACID — Five people have gone through the preliminary screening process for COVID-19 at Adirondack Health, but none of their samples have been tested, a spokesman for the hospital confirmed Friday.

None of those five cases had enough “risk criteria” — things that may make a case more likely to be COVID-19, such as recent international travel to select countries, symptoms like fever or respiratory issues, or contact with someone with a confirmed case — to be sent to a lab in Albany for testing, according to Adirondack Health spokesman Matt Scollin.

New York state, in an effort to increase testing capacity, is contracting with BioReference Laboratories to run an additional 5,000 tests per day, on top of the capacity of the 28 other private labs the state will be partnering with, according to a news release from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. The first public drive-through testing facility on the East Coast was opened in New Rochelle recently, a Westchester County city that had the largest cluster of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country as of Wednesday. The city was placed in a “containment area” by the state Tuesday and the National Guard was deployed there.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has the capacity to process between 300 and 350 tests each day, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield announced during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Thursday. Other systems at private labs will be coming online. The nation’s ability to quickly process tests has been criticized by some health officials.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases statewide had risen to 421, up from 325 on Thursday. The closest confirmed cases are in Herkimer and Saratoga counties. It’s unclear if either case is within the boundaries of the Adirondack Park.

At a meeting on coronavirus at the Conference Center in Lake Placid Friday, Adirondack Health CEO Sylvia Getman said it’s not a matter of “if” COVID-19 will reach the Adirondacks; it’s “when.”

The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump issued a national state of emergency Friday. Cuomo this past Saturday declared a state of emergency in New York state. On Thursday Cuomo announced the state would institute limits on mass gatherings. He said effective Friday at 5 p.m., the state would direct events with 500 or more individuals in attendance to be canceled or postponed. Events, gatherings, or places of business with less than 500 individuals in attendance are now required to cut capacity by 50%. Schools, hospitals, public buildings, mass transit, grocery stores and retail stores are exempt from that, but it applies to restaurants, theaters and churches.

Though no confirmed case of coronavirus has surfaced in the North Country, Essex County Board of Supervisors Chairman Shaun Gillilland on Tuesday issued a state of emergency countywide. Many government leaders, including Trump and Cuomo, have cautioned people about attending mass events.

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Testing

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Adirondack Health doesn’t have “kits” to test for COVID-19 but can collect specimen to be tested at a lab elsewhere, Getman said.

Adirondack Health is also able to first test in house for other illnesses with similar symptoms, such as influenza.

Before a person’s sample is sent to a designated lab for testing, though, they have to be deemed likely candidates for having COVID-19, according to Scollin. Hospitals are required to run down a list of risk criteria with patients to determine the likelihood they may have the disease. According to Getman, those criteria are changing all the time.

Certain questions are asked of patients: Has a person traveled internationally? Have they been around someone with a confirmed or likely case?

To prevent labs from being overrun with samples, hospitals are being required to first receive authorization from county and state health departments before sending off samples, Scollin said.

“We have not gotten to the place at this point where we’re saying this is truly a threat,” Essex County Director of Public Health Linda Beers said Friday.

If a person who hasn’t traveled internationally comes in with cold-like symptoms, and they haven’t come in contact with someone with a confirmed COVID-19 case, there’s “no real reason to believe” that person has the disease, Beers said.

“At this point, given the lab capability and the testing that we have, we are not testing any citizen who wants to have the test,” she said.

“We are responding, I think, appropriately,” Getman said. “The thing people don’t always understand is that these are very lengthy events. This is not a four-day ice storm. We need to also marshal the resources we have, not just the materials but the staff, so we have enough resources to manage this throughout the entire time frame.”

Getman stressed that even though not everyone is getting tested, if you’re sick, the hospital does want to see you.

“If you are sick, and sick enough to be in the hospital, we absolutely do want to see you, and we have the means to take care of you,” she said.

There will be a mental health component as COVID-19 spreads, she added.

“Unnecessary worry and panic, it’s just going to impact your ability to stay a healthy individual overall,” she said.

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Quarantine

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Beers said there are three levels of quarantine: precautionary, mandatory and isolation.

People recommended for precautionary quarantine are those who recently traveled to one of 29 select countries impacted by the spread of coronavirus, and have returned without symptoms. If a person develops symptoms after being home or returns from travel with symptoms, they move up to mandatory quarantine. The Essex County Health Department will get a public health order from the county attorney that requires a person to stay home, Beers said. The department will send a health professional to the affected person’s home, check that person’s home and call them later in the day. The department will take care of that person’s needs, she said.

When a person tests positive for COVID-19, by that time he or she likely would already be in mandatory quarantine, she said. The public health order for that person would be changed from mandatory to isolation quarantine, which is more strict, and the department would be mandated to check on that person twice a day, contact the person randomly and find people who have been within 6 feet of the person with COVID-19.

“One person starts a snowball effect, as we saw in Saratoga County,” Beers said, referring to the recent case of a CVS pharmacist who tested positive for COVID-19. “The same thing can happen in any one of our counties at any one time.”

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Town, village order supplies

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The town of North Elba and village of Lake Placid have bulk-ordered hand sanitizer through Essex County Emergency Services, town Supervisor Jay Rand said Friday.

It’s unclear when the supplies will be delivered, but when it is, the hope is that there will be enough on hand at the town hall for residents and town and village employees who need it, according to Rand.

“We asked them to send as much as they could possibly send,” he said. “We don’t really know exactly what we’re going to get. They don’t have a written program; it’s just available.”

As for public transportation, they’re taking it one day at a time, according to Rand.

“Somebody asked, ‘When are we going to stop the buses?'” he said. “Most of our answer to that is that we’re following the directives of the state and the county, and we’ll continue to work along those lines.”

The village and town are both in daily contact with the Essex County Department of Health and other organizations.

As of Friday, there were no expected changes to the municipalities’ meeting schedules, according to Rand.