Sometimes visible, sometimes hidden, vital work continues despite COVID-19
Michael Neary | Herald-Standard
Jenifer Wesolowsky, who works at the delivery window for Apothecare Pharmacy in Uniontown, continues to provide essential work in a stressful time. “You’ve got to be really safe,” she said.
Michael Neary | Herald-Standard
Jenifer Wesolowsky works at the delivery window for Apothecare Pharmacy in Uniontown, continuing to provide essential work during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Jenifer Wesolowsky said she feels glad to be helping people get their needed medicines – but she also feels the stress of doing urgent work at a time when many community members are striving to stay safe in their homes.
“It makes me happy because I’m helping them,” she said, and she noted the extensive gear, including gloves and masks, that she was wearing to protect herself and her customers.
Wesolowsky works at the delivery window for Apothecare Pharmacy in Uniontown. She said she knows that people who work with customers, as she does, have to be vigilant about their health so they don’t spread COVID-19. And she said she knows other people may be carriers, as well.
“It’s very stressful,” she said.
Wesolowsky is among a host of people in the community still working and providing essential, even urgent services amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Those workers range from firefighters to police, and from grocery store employees to nurses – some of whom serve clients by making door-to-door visits. They understand what’s at stake in these times.
“You’ve got to be really safe,” Wesolowsky said.
Wesolowsky said she feels healthy, and she’s careful. She was also diligent and polite as a steady stream of cars passed by her window on a recent morning, with drivers picking up their medicines.
Amy Lizza, a registered pharmacist who owns Apothecare Pharmacy with her husband, Walter Lizza, noted strong safety precautions the staff members are taking.
“We wear the masks,” she said. “We use safety precautions for drive-through. We do our best so we don’t infect each other.”
Apothecare Pharmacy has two locations in Uniontown. Walter and Amy Lizza also own Laurel LTC Pharmacy, in Uniontown, which, Amy Lizza explained, serves personal care and group home facilities.
Lizza said staff members are wearing cloth and paper masks simultaneously now, and she said the pharmacy does have one N95 mask for each staff member to use in the future if it’s deemed necessary.
“We’re definitely not spreading (the virus) to anybody,” she said.
Lizza noted the challenge of buying certain medicines from wholesalers during the COVID-19 crisis, including acetaminophen and the prescription-drug hydroxychloroquine. The latter has been discussed, so far without scientific evidence, as a possible treatment of COVID-19.
Hydroxychloroquine is, however, an established treatment for other conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis.
“The wholesalers are out of stock, so people with these chronic conditions can’t find it because people are stockpiling it for COVID-19,” Lizza said.
State Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine has been asked about that problem during press conferences, and she said the department is working with organizations to try to make hydroxychloroquine available to patients who have relied on it in the past.
Lizza said basic thermometers are also in short supply.
The deliveries pharmacies such as Apothecare make do not involve any contact – and that means no signatures.
“I have my gloves on,” said Harold Bell, who makes deliveries for the pharmacy. “We don’t let them sign. I sign. I put their name on the iPad.”
She said that in the Shop ‘n Save location, on 150 Walnut Hill Rd., pharmacy staff members are now bringing medicines to customers in the parking lot, and will now arrange for home deliveries during the COVID-19 crisis.
Lizza emphasized that staff members continually change their gloves and frequently wash surfaces with disinfectants – among other precautions.
Pharmacies, visible on street corners and nestled within the corners of larger stores, are among the more noticeable spots where people continue to do vital work. But some people serve beyond the gaze of the general population, trekking door to door to make sure people have what they need to thrive.
Beth Mihalik is a registered nurse who serves as the lead nurse with the Assertive Community Treatment – or ACT – program. The program is part of Chestnut Ridge Counseling Services, an organization that receives some of its funding from Fayette County.
Mihalik said the ACT program works with a “very vulnerable population” of people “with persistent mental illness” – including, predominantly, schizophrenia, but also other conditions such as bipolar disorder. The program includes a psychiatrist as well as psychiatric nurses, master’s level therapists, a vocational specialist and various other counselors and case managers. The program helps people experiencing mental illness to find work and housing – and also to stay well.
Many of the staff members are working remotely now, in response to COVID-19, but Mihalik and the registered nurse she works with, Tammy Garred, continue to visit clients in person.
Right now, Mihalik said, she and Garred are administering injections, sometimes dropping off medicine.
“We go to the door and hand it to them, keeping our distance,” she said. “Sometimes they will come out to the car, but we’ll remind them – stay six to 10 feet apart. They’re respectful to us. They understand why we’re doing it this way, but emotionally it’s hard.”
All the while, Mihalik said, the two nurses meticulously separate items in plastic bags, and they wear gloves – which they change frequently. When they administer injections, they wear N95 masks.
“We want to protect our families, and we want to protect our clients, too,” Mihalik said.
Mihalik stressed that the emotional impact of social distancing, in response to a global pandemic, can hit the population the ACT program serves particularly hard.
“It’s difficult because some of them may experience paranoia,” she said. “We’ve worked for years to try to get them to be comfortable going out, and now we’re telling them to stay home.”
She’s concerned that the progress her clients have made may be impeded. But she noted, too, that the way she and Garred converse with them right now matters. She wants to “help them without lecturing,” and to talk with them as thoughtfully as she can.
“We’ve been trying to play a supportive role,” she said. “We’ve learned the art of providing education to someone when they don’t necessarily know you’re providing education.”
Others performing vital work in the community operate largely out of sight, as well. They include those who answer 911 calls. Behind the scenes, these telecommunication officers are taking precautions familiar, by now, to many. They’re cleaning consuls frequently, and scouring phones and work areas, explained Susan Kozak-Griffith, public information officer for the Fayette County Emergency Management Agency and a 25-year veteran of the agency.
“We are fortunate that the county cleaning staff is still very active in the Public Service building,” Kozak-Griffith said in an email, mentioning another group of people continuing to do vital work. “Restrooms, elevators, common areas are cleaned daily.”
Kozak-Griffith, who has worked as a telecommunication officer herself, noted that the stress levels for an already high-pressure job have risen with the onset of COVID-19.
“Our TCOs have families,” she said. “Some have school children that are home, so the personal stress increases.”
She noted the staff’s longstanding commitment to safety and experience working emergency responders.
But now some of that work has changed. Kozak-Griffith said COVID-19 screening questions are now included in Emergency Medical Dispatch protocol. She drew on information, she said, provided by 9-1-1 Operations Manager Jodie Victor.
“On every (Emergency Medical Services) call, our TCOs now ask, ‘Does the patient have a fever, trouble breathing, flu-like symptoms or cough?'” Kozak-Griffith said. “If the caller answers yes, we then notify the responding units of a potentially positive viral illness.”
Like others performing vital but stressful work, telecommunication officers take solace in the tasks they perform, and in each other.
“We are fortunate to have the dispatch staff that we do,” Kozak-Griffith said, “men and women committed to the needs of our citizens and the needs and safety of emergency responders.”