Mount Desert Island Hospital reports no COVID cases in new worker testing program

Courtesy / Mount Desert Island Hospital MDI Hospital is seeing zero positives in a sentinel testing program, but fielding calls from visitors who received positive results after arrival. Seen here is the hospital’s COVID-19 screening pavilion.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Two weeks in, a program to test 200 front-facing employees for COVID-19 on Mount Desert Island has resulted in zero positives so far.

The 12-week program was established by the Downeast COVID-19 Task Force and is led by Mount Desert Island Hospital. It is for front-facing employees in tourism-related businesses such as restaurants and retail.

“The goal is to detect any potential COVID-19 outbreaks as early as possible to protect employees but also to help reduce the threat of exposure for the entire community,” said the hospital’s president, Art Blank, during a virtual presentation Wednesday. “So far, we’ve had a zero positivity rate in that program.”

The task force is a group of community stakeholders convened in response to the pandemic and includes the hospital, Jackson Laboratory, Acadia National Park, town and chamber of commerce leaders, Healthy Acadia and state legislators.

The program consists of biweekly asymptomatic tests for a pilot group of 200 workers — 10% to 15% of the island's front-facing seasonal staff — and is believed to be a first for Maine.

The pilot began July 20. Approximately 200 frontline workers have been tested so far, in alternating weekly cohorts of about 100. The plan is to continue testing for those enrolled employees every two weeks throughout the season. The cohort represents 38 businesses across Mount Desert Island, including restaurants, hotels, retail shops and others.

Visitor positives

On Tuesday, hospital officials also met with Jeanne Lambrew, commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and Dr. Nirav Shah, head of Maine's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to establish a new contact tracing partnership.

The partnership responds to recent incidents of out-of-state visitors who were tested before they traveled to Maine, but didn’t learn of their positive results until after they arrived.

The partnership grants the hospital public health jurisdiction to use Maine CDC’s Sara Alert system to log and contact-trace such visitors, Blank said.

Sara Alert is a new web-based tool to support the monitoring and reporting of COVID-19 close-contacts, according to the Maine CDC website.

Contact tracing is a tool to help prevent further spread of COVID-19.

“We are receiving calls from visitors (both tourists and family members of area residents) who were tested before traveling and only received positive results after their arrival here, and these visitors’ test results are not captured by current reporting requirements,” the hospital posted in a public service announcement last week.

“Having visitors who arrive from out of state without any results in hand and find they’re positive creates a particularly challenging situation for us,” Blank said.

But the partnership with Maine CDC will allow the hospital to have a greater opportunity to ensure that public health precautions available to Maine residents also become available to visitors, he said.

The hospital received seven such calls within the past week and a half.

“We were concerned this would happen as the summer progresses,” Blank added.

The individuals have been quarantining since they received the results, said Kate Worcester, a physician assistant and one of the hospital’s front-line providers.

Mask mailboxes

In a related development, the Downeast COVID-19 Task Force began rolling out a plan to set up mailboxes offering free protective face masks around Bar Harbor.

The town received a $126,000 grant from the state’s Keep Maine Healthy program, Elsie Flemings, head of Healthy Acadia, said in a separate virtual presentation last week.

Photo / Ezra Schreiber-MacQuaid

Mask “mailboxes” have been set up around Bar Harbor; 25,000 free masks have been distributed through the boxes so far.

The task force set up six mailboxes in some of the downtown’s busiest areas. The hospital procured over 40,000 medical-grade masks; of those, 25,000 have been distributed so far through the boxes.

The task for also installed signage in congested downtown areas asking people to wear masks, Flemings added.