Hospital & Community Spotlight

Nantucket can be proud of its leaders for acting early and decisively to protect the community from the threat of coronavirus, and I am in awe of the collective actions of all island residents to physically distance, stay home, wash their hands diligently, and adhere to the emergency orders put in place. Thanks to those actions, to date we have been able to limit the deadly impact of this virus and prevent significant community spread on the island. So far, so good.

But we know it takes only one person to change that. It takes only one person who may be carrying the virus unknowingly without showing symptoms to set us on a dangerous path of seeing more cases, more severe illness, and potentially a surge of COVID-19 patients that could threaten to overwhelm the healthcare resources of our remote island.

The coronavirus is amongst us and it remains a threat to our community. While we have welcomed the recent streak of days without a confirmed new case, we should not let this good news allow us to become complacent. Our island and our economy are tied to the mainland in so many ways, and we can all see what is happening just a short boat ride away on Cape Cod, in Boston, and New York where the coronavirus continues to have a major impact.

• The coronavirus testing criteria continues to evolve, and in some cases it changes day to day, but it has become less restrictive from the time we launched the drive-through evaluation site on March 16.

• Our current testing capacity essentially allows us to test all those patients who the clinical team feel have a need to be tested. If you are experiencing symptoms of respiratory illness, such as cough, sore throat, shortness of breath, and fever, please come to the drive-through evaluation site. The turnaround time for test results has been reduced to 24 hours in most cases.

• Patients coming to the drive through should know that specimens are sent out daily, weather permitting, at 3 p.m. to the mainland, so there’s a faster turnaround time if patients are swabbed before then. Coming after 3 p.m. means turnaround time could be around 48 hours.

April 2, 2020

Nantucket Cottage Hospital has now confirmed nine positive cases of COVID-19 on the island, and while this may seem like a relatively small number, we want to emphasize that the coronavirus threat is still very real, vigilance is imperative, and we must continue to stay home, practice physical distancing, and adhere to all the measures put in place to protect our community.

For most of the COVID-19 cases we have confirmed, we know of presumed positive family members and social contacts, all of who are appropriately quarantined but not counted in the total number of confirmed cases. In a household with a COVID-19-positive patient, they have likely already spread the virus to those in close contact, before their symptoms developed. So if those people develop symptoms a few days later, or not at all, they are presumed to be infected and not necessarily tested. The entire family of a COVID-19 patient is ordered to remain quarantined together for 14 days after exposure, and receives extensive CDC-issued instructions and guidance to prevent further infections.

As part of Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s ongoing coronavirus response and planning efforts, the hospital will welcome four members of the Massachusetts National Guard and Massachusetts Air National Guard this week who will assist with security needs, traffic control, and other logistical support at NCH. These service members will help NCH to ensure the safety and security of our patients during this challenging time.

The National Guard service members have been dispatched to Nantucket under orders from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, detailed to the Nantucket Police Department, and assigned to NCH by Police Chief Bill Pittman.

The National Guard service members will serve as part of the Hospital Incident Command structure. We anticipate that they would play a critical role in providing security and traffic control in the event of a surge of coronavirus patients at NCH that could result in a large number of patients, visitors, and vehicles seeking access to the hospital campus and facility.

We are sensitive to the fact that the presence of these National Guard service members could be intimidating for some residents of Nantucket. We want to assure the community that their role is simply to assist in the hospital’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus threat, and they will not be involved in any federal immigration enforcement activities.

To our expectant mothers on Nantucket,

As we have seen the first confirmed cases of coronavirus on Nantucket, we write to update you on the ongoing changes at Nantucket Cottage Hospital that are being implemented to keep you, your baby, and the Birthplace staff as safe and healthy as possible.

The Birthplace at NCH is one of the most secure and isolated areas of the hospital. Under our rigorous infection control protocols, everyone who enters the hospital is screened for any viral symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, or shortness of breath).  Moreover, the Birthplace is a locked unit for the safety and security of our patients and their babies, and only a very limited number of staff members have access to the unit. 

The visitor policy at NCH has been modified to prohibit most visitors to patients in the hospital with a few exceptions, including obstetrical patients. Women giving birth at NCH are permitted to have one adult visitor, provided the person has no viral symptoms. The one adult visitor must be the same person throughout your entire admission at NCH. As your due date approaches, the NCH Birthplace staff will be available to discuss the current details of this policy with you.