Community is reminded of COVID-19 testing event

During the weekly community partners conference call Wednesday morning, COVID-19 vaccines were discussed. In addition, the community partners were reminded of the upcoming free community COVID-19 testing event to be held today.

Vernon County Health Department

The Vernon County Health Department noted that they hadn't received any new information pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines since last week's community partners call. The health department will also close at noon on Christmas Eve and reopen at 8 a.m., Jan. 4, 2021. COVID-19 cases will continue to be worked as they are reported.

Nevada Regional Medical Center

"Right now, we have three in the hospital," noted Nevada Regional Medical Center CEO Steve Branstetter in reference to COVID-19 cases. "This is better than the last few weeks. Our emergency room has kind of been up and down. Some days we're real busy and some days we're not, so we're maintaining real well. One of our big issues right now is staff out with the virus so we're having some staffing issues, but overall we're okay. As far as the vaccine, we're just waiting for our application to get the vaccine. We hope to have it here soon. I think our focus will mainly be on our clinical staff and our doctors the first round. We're not sure how many vaccines we're going to get — just waiting day-to-day on that."

Vernon County Commission

"We did finalize phase 3 recently of the CARES money," stated Presiding Commissioner Joe Hardin. "We continue to move forward with that in the next 14 days — three weeks from today, all of that money has to be spent. There is a little bit left over, so we're going to see what we can do with that."

Compass Health

A representative from Compass Health reminded those on the call that there will be a free community COVID-19 testing event held at the Franklin P. Norman Community Center Friday (today) from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The testing event will have same day results.

Nevada Housing Authority

“Because of limited staff due to the holiday next week, I may have to go to some limited hours, but I’ll put a news release out,” stated Nevada Housing Authority Director Carol Branham.