Hospital tightens visitation policy

In light of the continued spread of the Omicron variant, visitation rules are changing for patients within the Crook County Memorial Hospital.

“COVID-19 is continuing to be a problem for every county in the state,” said CEO Micki Lyons on Friday, as she outlined the change in policy for the board of trustees.

“Vaccination rates haven’t moved much despite the change in ages for boosters.”

On Friday, Crook County’s hospital was treating a total of three patients with COVID-19, the highest amount at one time since the end of November. That number, however, dropped back down to zero over the weekend.

“We’re seeing a lot of positives through the clinics and are also continuing to have quite a few positive in-patients,” Lyons said.

This has led the district to make changes to the hospital’s visitation policy, she said, which now states that, “Non-COVID patients may have two visitors at a time and COVID-19 patients may have one visitor per day between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.,” said Lyons.

“They must wear personal protective equipment, including mask and gown, and must remain in the patient’s room.”

Because flu season is upon us, said Lyons, the hospital is asking that there be no visitors under the age of 18 and visitation for palliative care will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

“Which it’s always been, pretty much,” noted Trustee Mark Erickson.

Omicron spread

The precipitous rise of Omicron in Wyoming came to an abrupt but brief halt last week with the announcement that known active cases had dropped by almost half. The Wyoming Department of Health released new statistics on Tuesday that included more than 5300 recoveries.

Despite 1172 new recorded infections on that day, this cut the number of known active cases from 7769 to 3958, a decline of 49%. In Crook County, the number of active cases fell from 68 to 39.

However, in the time since, the numbers have once again begun to climb. By Monday, Crook County had 55 active cases and the state as a whole had 5509.

Statewide hospitalizations have also been steadily increasing from a low of 56 on January 2 to a total of 165 on Monday. Last week, the WDH also reported 24 new deaths caused by COVID-19, bringing the overall total to 1625.

Testing for variants has now led to the detection of 481 cases of Omicron in Wyoming, two of which have been recorded in Crook County. Not all positive results are tested for the presence of variants.