Augusta had its first two presumed positive cases of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 reported Monday but more are likely as more testing is done, doctors at AU Health System said.

Augusta had its first two presumed positive cases of the novel coronavirus reported Monday, but more are likely as more testing is done, doctors at AU Health System said.

The two patients — an employee at AU Health and the spouse of the employee — are awaiting confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CEO Katrina Keefer said.

“They are not and have not been patients in our facility,” she said, and are currently isolated at home.

The employee did have “patient care duties,” but the extent of contact with patients is unclear, said AU Health Chief Medical Officer Phillip Coule. The health system is now working to “make sure we identify and take appropriate precautions with any patient contacts that the individual had,” he said.

With both patients, the health system is doing what is called contact tracing “and pretty much investigate these individuals, starting from where they were probably last week sometime and every step they’ve taken, everywhere they’ve been, whether it is a grocery store, their mother’s house, wherever it is, and we’re going to have to go back and see how many individuals have come in contact with them,” said Dr. Jose Vazquez, the chief of infectious diseases at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

By contacts, it means people who spent a significant amount of time close to one of the patients, within three feet for at least two minutes, he said.

“So unless that individual was in direct contact for a period of time, individuals do not have to worry about it,” Vazquez said.

AU Health officials did not want to say where the employee worked, and federal health privacy laws prohibit disclosing much personal information, but one of the patients identified himself as Evans attorney Jason Hasty, who is seeking the Republican nomination to become district attorney for the Augusta Judicial Circuit.

Hasty said he was tested at AU Health and is presumed positive and was disclosing “in the interest of the safety of the community.”

He said he might have been exposed to the virus while attending the Church of Liberty Square in Cartersville on March 1 and March 8 while in town caring for his father. He later experienced shortness of breath and fatigue, two of the symptoms of COVID-19, and sought testing.

He and his spouse became “persons under investigation” this past weekend.

AU Health was going to send off the test Monday morning, but the Georgia Esoteric and Molecular Laboratory at MCG was validated to run COVID-19 tests late Sunday afternoon and had enough material to run six tests, of which two were positive, Keefer said.

AU Health is pursuing more testing materials and hopes to ramp up testing by week’s end, Vazquez and Coule said.

That will likely result in more positives, they said.

“We know that COVID-19 is here now,” Coule said. “It is in our community.”

“I guarantee you, you’ve come in contact with somebody with coronavirus if you’re living, alive and out there,” Vazquez said. “It’s here and it has been here. There’s no doubt it has been here. It’s just that we didn’t have enough tests. Now that we have testing, you can see how rapidly this happens. Do not be concerned that we are going to see several, quite a few individuals (testing) positive all over the metro area in the next couple of days. That’s expected. That’s normal.”

“The overall risk to the public remains low, but we should be aggressive in making sure that it remains low” by taking positive steps, Coule said. That includes good hand hygiene, covering coughs and sneezes, frequent handwashing and practicing social distancing whenever possible, he said.

Keefer said she and the CEOs of University and Doctors hospitals talked Monday about how they can cooperate with each other in light of potential spread of COVID-19.

“We agreed that these will likely be unprecedented times, but we have vowed to work together and keep each other informed to ensure the best care” of patients in Augusta, she said.

The hospitals are asking that patients not just show up at emergency departments with symptoms of a respiratory illness but call ahead so they can be screened to see whether they need to be referred for testing.

AU Health has a COVID-19 hotline at (706) 721-1852, and it has an app on its website and in the Apple and Android stores that patients can use to be screened in a telehealth visit to see whether they meet the criteria for testing.

The Augusta cases did not appear in the most recent count of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Georgia. The Department of Public Health said there were 121 as of noon Monday. Most of those are in the metro Atlanta area and in south Georgia around Albany.

South Carolina also saw its first death from COVID-19, a patient at Lexington Medical Center Extended Care Skilled Nursing Facility, and the state is working with staff to identify all contacts, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control said Monday.

Georgia saw its first death last week but has had no new deaths since then.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and the Georgia Health Care Association representing the state’s nursing homes are urging nursing homes, assisted living communities and personal care homes to restrict all visitors and nonessential personnel in light of the heavy toll that COVID-19 takes on the elderly and those with chronic health conditions.

Staff writer Susan McCord contributed to this article.

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