The Monument Health caregiver that tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday may have had contact with 100 patients, ten caregivers and two physicians.

Monument Health said once they found out about the positive test result, they immediately began work to identify anyone that may have had contact with that caregiver in the day and a half of work after they returned from traveling. The contacted caregivers and physicians were immediately sent home to self-quarantine.

The caregiver worked at the Cancer Care Institute in Rapid City. Monument Health said the caregiver was from Meade County and had traveled outside the Black Hills, as Monument Health does not have a policy about travel within the United States as the policy only mentions travel outside the United States only.

Paulette Davidson, Monument Health CEO, says the South Dakota Department of Health has been calling all of the potential contacts with the caregiver who tested positive and will continue following up with the potential contacts.

"Once the Department of Health completes the phone calls today our internal clinical team will maintain ongoing communication with those patients. We're going to be checking on those patients while they're at home and making sure they're doing well," Davidson said.

"Right now we're doing okay with staffing. We've limited our elective surgical procedures. We've stopped all elective surgical procedures so we're able to use our staff that was in those roles and have them step into other roles," Davidson added.

Davidson says they're working on developing capacity plans and emergency planning to scale their operations to the needs of the community.

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