By Rich Larson, News Director
Northfield Hospital & Clinics President & CEO Steve Underdahl said yesterday that the front lines of the fight against the Coronavirus and Covid-19
have reached Rice County.
Underdahl said that since the end of September, positive tests in Rice County for Covid-19 have risen from less than 3% to now 15%. The numbers have increased so much, he said, that Covid patients now account for anywhere from one-third to one-half of all the patients at the Northfield hospital, so many in fact that the hospital has had to establish a Covid wing.
However, Underdahl said, the hospital is in a much better position to deal with the influx of patients than it was last spring.
“We’re just in a lot better shape almost all the way around to be able to respond. We’ve got PPE, we’ve got processes, we understand the disease better. There are treatments and drugs we can use that aren’t cures but have therapeutic value. We just understand the disease a lot better.”
With the Covid positive graph looking like, as he put it, “the classic hockey stick,” Underdahl said the best thing any of us can do is to act responsibly and take the virus seriously. Pointing to the “really unfortunate” fact that the pandemic became a political issue, he said that the coming holiday season will have to be different from other years. Family gatherings will have to stay very small, if they happen at all.
He also said that Pfizer’s recent news that they have a vaccine on the way that could be as high as 90% effective is very encouraging.
Underdahl’s entire conversation with Jeff Johnson can be found HERE.
City Council authorizes CARES Act money appropriations
On Tuesday night, the city council approved just under $200,000 in CARES Act money to be distributed to the Chamber of Commerce, Northfield Public Schools and Northfield Hospital & Clinics.
The Chamber will receive $50,000 to help with staffing operations. Because of the pandemic, the Chamber has been unable to host several events they would have in a normal year, which has left their fundraising efforts short. A portion of that money will also go to the Northfield Convention & Visitors Bureau, which is operated by the Chamber.
Northfield Public Schools will receive $40,000 to help with expenses related to personal protection equipment that the school had to buy when the pandemic broke out. These were unexpected and unfunded expenditures for which the school district had not budgeted.
And Northfield Hospital & Clinics will receive $75,000 to implement an online screening process that will pair patients with the proper caregivers they need more easily and efficiently. The total cost of the program is closer to $200,000 but the CARES money is enough for the hospital to commit to it.
City administrator Ben Martig said that distributing the $1.5 million the city received has been a big job for the council, but all the members have been in agreement throughout the process.
“This money is great, but it’s a big responsibility to get a little over a million-and-a-half and be told to figure out the best way to distribute this out to the community. And we’ve had 7-0 votes the whole way through with the city council. I think that’s a testament to really being thoughtful on how we get those dollars out.”
Martig also said that the city still has about $100,000 left for general business assistance, and another $50,000 for non-profit assistance.
You can hear Martig’s full conversation with Jeff Johnson HERE.
City to launch new website
And the Northfield City website is getting a makeover.
Visitors will find the new design to have a cleaner, more modern look with
tiled information for news and events and larger images. Northfield Communications and Human Resources Director Michelle Mahowald said the new site will have more flexibility on the homepage for important information. Accessibility and making things more age-friendly were top priorities in the new design, and the new site will offer features like a re-sizing tool on the interior pages in order to increase font sizes.
The website redesign is part of the ongoing maintenance and hosting contract with the city’s website vendor CivicPlus. The new site will launch this afternoon. When it does you can visit it by clicking HERE.
