Shelter Island’s Chief of Police has a message for anyone living here who tests positive for COVID-19: “notify me”. That’s so he can give the information — in confidence — to dispatchers should an emergency response be required.
“What I’m asking today is that if anybody that’s residing in the community of Shelter Island is confirmed COVID-19 positive via a test, a confirmation, that you notify me directly,” Chief Read said during the Town’s twice-weekly emergency update Tuesday.
Read said he would notify the Chief of Police of Southold, which is where local dispatchers are based. “We owe it to our first responders to know that if they’re responding to your residence that they need to take the appropriate PPE and to have those protections in place before they come to your residence.”
To reach Chief Read, call the non-emergency number at the police station, 631-749-0600 and let the person who answers the phone know you need to speak privately with him.
Two confirmed cases
Confusion about the number of cases on Shelter Island stems from a lag in reporting by Suffolk County, which provides a daily update on the total number of cases. The breakdown by township, however, is not up to date in the public report carried at suffolkcountyny.gov.
Read said he knows of two confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Shelter Island, among more than 6,700 in Suffolk County. Numbers countywide, he said, are rising 700 to 900 cases per day.
“When you’re getting updates on 700 to 900 cases per day, the timeframe to report that to our local dispatchers and our first responders who could respond to your residents isn’t always timely,” Read said.
The county accurately reported a first case on March 19, but later added a second case that Read said was misidentified because the person has a home here, but was not staying in it at the time.
Suffolk County currently reports just one case on the Island, a person who is hospitalized, Read said. Another person notified him directly of a positive test result.
“We had a health care worker notify us that they were COVID-19 positive and they wanted, again to protect our EMS and protect the people that might have to respond to their residence,” he said.
EMS prepared for COVID-19 response
Shelter Island EMS personnel are prepared to respond to COVID-19 calls, Read said. And, they’ll follow their longstanding practice of notifying medical control officials at Stony Brook University Hospital to find out where to transport a patient.
Typically, Shelter Island EMS teams transport cases to Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport or Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. Some cases, depending upon the type of emergency, may be transported to Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead. And rarely, patients are taken up-island to Stony Brook University Hospital, the region’s Level 1 trauma center. These transports may include the use of medevac helicopter operated by the Suffolk County Police Department.
To learn more about our local medical resources, read this Gazette post.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has called for hospitals throughout the state to work in coordination with one another to share resources and caseloads, as demand for services increases. Hospital associations are working together, the governor said Tuesday, to create a centralized command center to enable hospitals in hot zones, like New York City, Long Island and Westchester, to draw upon resources — including equipment, supplies, and even labor — from facilities in areas where the current burden is lower.
Eventually, as hospitals in any one region become overwhelmed, this centralized command may authorize patient transfers to other regions.
Read said that locally Stony Brook medical control advises EMS teams on where patients will be received and that any transfers from the receiving hospital to further destination are handled by that institution’s own ambulance services.
