Report issued on Crook County infectious disease exercise

On Tuesday, June 4, the Crook County Health Department and local partners conducted a Full Scale County Wide Exercise to simulate the intentional release, spread of an infectious disease such as Plague – the simulation showed that no one was immunized, and there was a need to distribute as much medication as possible in a 4-hour period.

Here’s the final report on the event from Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Vicky Ryan:

Thank you to all of you who participated in making this a very successful exercise.

The focus of the Crook County exercise was to identify opportunities for improvement around getting antibiotics into the community to treat people and prevent the spread of any communicable disease. No actual medication was distributed. We set up a drive through point of dispensing and handed out survival tools and preparedness information. The winners for the drawings are – Cindy York and Amber Dozhier each won a one person 3-day emergency backpack with supplies and Maggie Thurman won a 72-hour emergency food bucket for four.

We counted 253 individuals who were “treated” at our exercise. 179 adults, 50 youth under the age of 18, 18 seniors over the age of 65 and 6 veterans. We had a number of pets counted as well who came through with their owners, with 46 staff and local partners who participated.

Public health crisis exercises such as this Full Scale Exercise train and keep the skills of our staff and partners fresh. We need to be ready to keep people in Crook County healthy through a coordinated response in the event this becomes real. While the potential for this scenario is real, the likelihood is low.

This exercise was the first of an ongoing series of exercises we will conduct in and with our community. It is vital to the health of the community to exercise ways to communicate threats and to mitigate spread of disease as well as identify and isolate individuals who may be infected, getting them medical attention as quickly as possible. Our next preparedness function will be at the Crook County Fair, so please plan to visit our booth and pick up your emergency preparedness survival tools.

Using a basic survey, we collected data during the exercise to help us better understand how to communicate with our public. We learned that people heard about the exercise in this order – social media was #1, Partners telling their clients was a close 2nd and then traditional news, email, friends and family and Health Department programs in that order.

Here are a few lessons learned:

We need more grant funding to purchase additional supplies such as radios and emergency response equipment. Although the Health Department has not done one of these exercises in the past, the exercise was well-structured and the training we gained was priceless. Continued training and education to our staff and our public is vital so that we are prepared when we are confronted with a real incident. We need feedback from our public on the best ways to communicate to reach the most people.

For a more complete after action report, please contact Vicky Ryan. For more information please contact our main office at 541-447-5165.