- [Announcer] Wheelan Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

Now providing livestream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service at their chapel and Rock Island.

- Waiting for a Thanksgiving surge.

How a rural county faces COVID right now.

And a new treatment that's being offered to just a few in the Cities.

(upbeat music) The Cities have faced stiffer Illinois restrictions imposed on people going out to public places but it hasn't lasted as long as the restrictions imposed to the North of the Cities, places like Sterling Rock Falls and Morrison, Galena and much of Northern Illinois.

Whiteside County started facing a spike in COVID cases weeks earlier and people like Cheryl Lee have been dealing with it every step of the way.

She's the Whiteside County Public Health Administrator who talked to me about the fears of the Thanksgiving surge, the weight for a vaccine and the winter that's ahead of us.

What are you seeing right now in Whiteside County?

And let's be honest, your county was hit hard weeks ago.

- We did, we had a lot of cases that we were seeing, and unfortunately we had a lot of deaths that we were seeing that we did not see in the phase one, very alarming.

So we have been seeing cases that are trending downward.

We had a very high day yesterday.

Kind of concerning to see if maybe that was part of Thanksgiving but I don't think we're going to really see the impact of what Thanksgiving brought well until next week.

So we're keeping an eye on those numbers but today was a low number for us.

I believe we had under 20, maybe it was 18.

Yesterday was 79.

So hopefully, you know, we can hope that those numbers will continue to decrease and our positivity rates will go down.

I looked today, I think as of December 1, our seven day rolling average is down to 13.3%.

And then our day test positivity on the first was 8.1.

So we are trending downward but I would just emphasize it is not the time to relax on the things that we are doing because everything that we're doing would indicate that it is making an impact.

And we want to, you know stay the course until we can get through this.

- Well, and let's be honest, statistics are statistics.

What you're looking at is not necessarily the numbers of today, but the trend.

The second thing is that, yeah you were pointing out the 13% positivity rate.

But remember when we were saying that eight was the threshold and oh my gosh, you're reaching eight.

Now we're looking at 13 and being somewhat thankful.

- Right, so perspective.

I mean, we were cringing over 8% and we got up to 25% and now, when you get back down to 13%, it seems like, "Well, hey, that's great," but we have to keep it in perspective.

And you know, that's still 13% and you know, we don't want to see that.

We want to get back to the days when, you know, things are normal and that percent is, you know, near zero for us.

And then we certainly, you know, very concerned with the number of deaths.

- And I wanted to talk about that in particular because the statistics that I have is that Whiteside County has had 92 deaths to this point compared to Rock Island County, a much larger county, with 135 deaths, only about 40 more.

Why do you think Whiteside County was so badly hit?

I think we were hit harder in the second wave than the first wave.

You know, we had a lot hit our congregant long-term care facilities.

I don't think that we have the data.

I think hindsight is going to be 2020 to look back to say why, but to say there's one reason for that, I don't think that we can actually speak to that right now.

We did have a lot in congregate settings, like I said before Elderly, of course, those who have co-morbidities are at a higher risk for that as well, which is why it's really important for those who don't have it to really look at those mitigation strategies to protect those who are the most vulnerable.

- Are you a little worried right now because of three things all coming together at one time?

The holidays, COVID fatigue and talk of a vaccine where people are thinking, "Okay there's light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't have to be so careful anymore."

- Right, well there is COVID fatigue.

I mean, the workers certainly, I mean public health when you're going seven days a week after nine months you do get a little bit tired.

Just the physical tired and the mental tired.

I mean, it's a very heated debate.

You know, people are gonna like you, people are not going to like you.

You know, when you try to keep that perspective, I mean definitely healthcare workers in the hospitals and things and taking care of patients with that.

And I think the general population, I mean, our lives have completely changed and a lot of things we do and that's a lot to take on, especially for the long haul.

So we are always wanting to make sure that people are aware of their mental health and behavioral, you know, those types of things that you might be struggling with, why normal.

It's important to self care and, when you're struggling, and to get that assistance as well because this isn't going away once the vaccine necessarily comes.

It's going to be a process to get everybody vaccinated.

We're still going to have the mask and we're still gonna have to do those things, you know, stay home when you're sick.

You're more mindful of that one symptom actually could turn into COVID.

I think there's some more awareness of that contributing to maybe the lower cases.

People certainly, initially we all, a lot of people were saying, they thought they had allergies and we know that a lot of those became COVID.

And so more people are aware of that as well.

And then, you know, contact tracing has really helped.

So we can identify early on those who may be positive and there's going to be less exposure with that.

- Contact tracing has been very important.

And that's why you have linked a lot to get-togethers either at bars, restaurants, but also family gatherings.

I mean, that has been the big concern now, is when it comes to public gatherings, more of the family gathering.

- So yeah, the private gatherings have always been a source.

You know, the cause you're, you know, the household contacts with your family and friends, you're together for longer periods of time.

You're less likely to mask and you may frequently get with them.

So it really increases the probability of becoming positive and spreading it to someone else.

The weddings, the funerals, the get-togethers, you know, the parties and things like that have definitely contributed to the cases that we have seen in public health.

You know, we are able to, through contact tracing, to figure out for a lot of the cases, you know, where they got it from, who they gave it to, and we can have that epi link to see what we're looking at.

- Is contact tracing, even all that important anymore because we now kind of know where it is coming from or is it so important for the specificity of each case?

- Well, it's important.

I know that the CDC has the recommendations and IDPH looking at that.

So it's important because you want to help that person that has, that let them know they're positive and to keep them isolated and put those measures into place.

And it'll keep an eye on them to make sure they're not going to get too sick and make sure they're there knowing, you know, how to self care.

Then also to keep people quarantined, especially those four household contacts and the high-risk individuals, to keep them quarantined at home so they're not out in the public or their workplaces and such spreading it.

- CDC has changed some of its recommendations as far as quarantine.

It used to be kind of like a 14 day and that's it, that's the red line, is 14 days.

And now they're pretty much saying, "Okay, seven days if you're not showing any symptoms and you're testing negative, 10 days if you have tested positive early on but haven't shown any symptoms afterwards."

- So the positivity rate is not changing.

So when you are positive for COVID, it's still that 10 days.

You know, the data's showing, the science after 10 days of not being an infectious.

And of course, when we contact trace we will go the two days prior to when symptom onset started.

The quarantine you can still become positive up to 14 days.

I think what they're looking at is after, maybe day 11, the rate of getting it will drop significantly.

So I think it comes to the point of knowing the science and the data and the practicality of everything like that.

So if we're gonna use the most of our resources when you're looking at that quarantine, when are people most likely to become infected?

And that's going to be early on in the exposure as opposed to later in that.

So the 14 days is still there, where someone can get an infected, it's what makes sense for the length of quarantine to keep people out of work, you know, and those other situations.

And again, using your public health system, you know, what makes the most sense to use those resources?

- Now you have seen all of the statistics.

Have you seen these line graphs, probably you see them in your sleep right now, and you saw the huge surge that was in the spring.

Then you're seeing the big surge right now but you're kind of seeing it fall off a bit.

Are you holding your breath now because of Thanksgiving and Christmas?

I mean, in other words, do you think this surge might be longer lasting until perhaps mid January just because of the holiday season?

- Yeah, I think we do kind of hold our breath a little bit.

I mean, it's a pandemic.

None of us have been through it before.

You know, early on when this all started in the springtime, you know, we kind of went on a little bit of lockdown in Illinois.

And then, you know, those measures were put into place.

As time went on we had different phases.

And then when you get to phase four people are out and about a lot more.

We were in warmer weather, a lot more going outside and doing things with, you know, family and friends.

Now, the cold weather we're getting more indoors.

So I think it's kind of, the data's kind of going along with our phases and the exposure of individuals.

You know, of course when, you know, holidays, your, people want to get together, that's human nature.

So we do hold our breath a little bit on what those numbers will be and not just the cases that are coming, but how is that going to be spilling over into those high risk settings and protecting those who are the most vulnerable?

And the other thing we want to look at is, you know, our healthcare utilizations.

Our hospitals still have to treat flu.

They have to treat car accidents and trauma and all those other things don't go away just because they also have to deal with COVID.

So we want to protect those resources as well.

- As the public health administrator for Whiteside County, you're very active in the compliance side of this as well.

Not that you're knocking on people's doors and things like that, but they do get reported to you.

Has compliance changed at all since the first wave because in the spring, people were very upset.

Now we're talking about being COVID fatigued but also kind of a, "Oh yeah I guess this is going on again," almost a COVID acceptance.

- Right, I mean we want people to be compliant with their mask wearing.

I mean, I think more people are and they understand the importance of that and how more of a community, you know, engagement and responsibility to help people.

And I think seeing these alarming death rates speaks volumes to people and what we need to do to be compliant with the masking, the social distancing and then staying home when you're sick and being mindful of the symptoms.

And if you do have a symptom, you know, getting tested to see what's really going on with you and to make sure that you're not going to be infecting other people.

- And you do have a series of tests that are coming up once again, later on in December - Right, so we have multiple testing sites in Whiteside County, both through both of our hospitals and then at our community health clinic.

Here at the health department, we also test five days a week and then December 19th and 20th, on that weekend the state will be here to do nine to five drive up testing.

That will be on the Northland Mall over in Sterling.

- The other question I've got to ask you is that, once again, you take a look back, 2020 hindsight, on this pandemic, and it started in the big cities.

New York, Chicago for Illinois, and people were going, "Oh, it's a Chicago problem."

And then we really saw it sweep through the rural areas.

I mean, you talk about Mercer County or or Whiteside County or Joe Davis.

Did that surprise you at all at how it spread through the rural areas in the late summer and into the fall?

- Well, no, I mean, and some of it, I mean if you look at population, you're a bigger cities you have a lot more people together.

It's hard to social distance when you're in a very large area.

Whether, and people take public transportation on buses and trains and all those kinds of things.

So the closer the contact and the longer the contact, you're going to have that spread a lot quicker.

So that's not surprising.

The other thing with Whiteside County is we border another state.

And so when you have two states that are handling it differently, so that will spill over.

We have a lot of our residents who go over to Iowa, who shop, who do the personal business and who also work over there.

So there is that, I think that influence as well.

- Cheryl Lee, the Whiteside County Public Health Administrator Whiteside County will be offering free COVID tests, once again, December 18th and 19th.

And you can contact the Health Department for details in a moment, one hospital's plans to use a COVID antibody that's just become available.

But first let's get you ready to enjoy some of the holiday season that's before us.

Here's Laura Adams, "Out and About."

(upbeat music) - [Laura] This is out and about through December 14th.

Augustana College we'll hold virtual performances of Christmas at Augustana through the 24th.

Visit the Augustana website to view the music and get in the holiday spirit.

The 2020 Fejervary Holiday Lights display is up and gorgeous.

Visit through January 3rd.

From ancient times to today, children have played with toys.

Explore the Putnam original exhibit, Play: the Story of Toys, open through the 31st at the Putnam Museum.

Cancer survivors use art to celebrate and reflect upon survival at the Living Proof exhibit at the Figge Art Museum through December 12th.

Ballet Quad Cities presents "The Nutcracker in the Round," in the ballroom at The Outing Club, December 4th through 6th.

Kickoff Geneseo's Christmas Walk with their virtual 5k Jingle Run, while the lighted parade will travel six miles throughout Geneseo.

Spectators are invited to watch from their cars starting at five on the 12th.

Wander through Christmas at Deere-Wiman House, taking place the ninth through the 20th.

Registration required for free, timed-entry tickets.

Hotel Blackhawk presents their First Annual Holiday Market starting at 10:30 AM.

Check out their Facebook event page.

River Music Experience presents Curbside Concerts to spread a little holiday cheer.

Contact RME to arrange your concert.

White Nights Winter Lights at the Quad City Botanical Center continues through January 10th.

For more information, visit wqpt.org.

- [Announcer] We're in this together, Quad Cities.

We take care one another.

So mask up, wash your hands and social distance so that in time you can get back to the very best version of the Quad Cities.

- The pandemic has hit the arts community hard.

Theaters are closed, music venues shut down.

Even school productions were shuttered.

There's a new rally and cry aimed at people in the Cities who are ready to save the arts at its most fragile time.

It's called "Save the Arts QC."

It was created by Brent Tubbs, the co-owner of the Spotlight Theater in Moline.

Take a look.

(inspirational music) ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ These eyes will not be blinded by the lights ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ What's waited till tomorrow starts tonight ♪ ♪ It starts tonight ♪ ♪ Let this promise in me start ♪ ♪ Like an anthem in my heart ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ And we will come back home ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ From now on ♪ ♪ Home, again ♪ Created by Spotlight Theater co-owner Brent Tubbs, "Save the Arts QC" is a video you can share on social media.

Just use the hashtag #savetheartsQC.

OSF Healthcare is the hospital system based in Peoria that also operates Galesburg OSF St. Mary Medical Center.

It's announced it is one of the few medical facilities offering a specialized antibody, nicknamed bam, to help treat a select few COVID patients.

We talked with the Vice President For Physician Services for OSF healthcare, Dr. Mark Meeker.

Dr. Meeker, thanks, first of all, for joining us but let's be honest, right now is such a critically crunch time for hospitals large and small.

You're still worried about this Thanksgiving surge or post Thanksgiving surge.

What are you seeing inside the hospitals now?

- Well, we've been very busy basically since Halloween.

We saw a slight uptick after Labor Day.

But when Halloween got here, our Memorial Day I should say, not Labor Day.

But when Halloween got here though, really ticked up quite rapidly.

And we got very concerned, especially with Thanksgiving and the holiday season coming.

But I do have to say that, you know, the bright side is over the last two weeks we've seen things start to plateau and also health care, while we have a very busy hospitals, we do still have some capacity.

So we're very thankful for that and we're hoping this plateau is the beginning of a turnaround and a little bit of a downturn but we'll see.

We haven't seen an uptick yet from Thanksgiving, but it's only been a week.

And the incubation period for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is, it averages about five days, but it can stretch out to you know, 11, 12 days.

So we'll see here in the next week, if we see any surge after Thanksgiving.

- Even so, even without this surge though, across the state of Iowa and Illinois, and it's a generalization but about a third of all ICU beds are already filled, at least a third, by COVID patients.

That's a huge deal though.

- It is a huge deal.

And one of the topics I think we're going to cover today is this new intravenous treatment for COVID.

the monoclonal antibody called bamlanivimab.

And we call it a bam for short cause that's hard to spit out.

But bam is a monoclonal antibody we're starting to use that, in preliminary data, it was shown to decrease the risk of disease progression to the point of needing hospitalization in patients with mild to moderate disease when they're treated within 10 days of onset of symptoms.

So we're really hoping that this will help us decrease the hospitalization rate in that specific patient population so we can maintain capacity.

Because to your point, you know, our hospitals have a lot of COVID patients right now, but other illnesses have not gone away.

People still need other surgeries, other testing, other illnesses treated.

So we need capacity to take care of patients in their time of need.

So anything we can do to slow the spread of this virus, from a community standpoint, and anything we can do from a medical standpoint to lessen the severity of disease so we can keep things out of the hospital, the better off we all are.

- Well, let's talk a little bit more about bam, which is the immunotherapy treatment that is being done at OSF, but it's for just a very select few people.

Is that not correct?

- That's correct.

This antibody using monoclonal antibodies is standard of care in some other illnesses but this is very new for this viral infection.

This is the first time we've really done this.

And this virus is novel, it's new to us, for the last eight months.

So there's a lot of, we're still learning a lot about this illness.

But bam is an IV therapy for COVID that was released under what's called an emergency use authorization.

And what that means is the FDA was in the process of evaluating information on bam to see if it would meet the requirements for FDA approval.

During that process, there was some early indications that it does decrease hospitalizations.

So based on that, with no safety warning signs in these early trials, the FDA decided to give this an emergency use authorization for our specific population of people without the full FDA approval.

For the population that we're directing this towards is that population that is at risk of getting sick enough to need to be in the hospital.

- Well, let's be honest is that people are perhaps starting to get confused right now because we're talking about this type of a treatment.

At the same time, we're seeing vaccines being unveiled and these are not the same type of things.

This is not a vaccine.

What is the difference?

- That's a very good point and an important point.

This is a monoclonal antibody.

This is an antibody that fights off the virus.

So this antibody is procured from a natural state, taken into a laboratory and then replicated so we can make more of that same antibody.

We then infuse that antibody into a symptomatic patient and it fights the virus.

What a vaccine does, is a vaccine stimulates your immune system to make antibodies itself.

But that takes longer.

And so it's a whole different ball game.

The vaccine is going to be, have similar restrictions early on, cause it's going to be a limited supply, but it's a different topic than the monoclonal antibody.

The monoclonal antibody is not for prevention.

Like a vaccine is.

A vaccine is for prevention.

The monoclonal antibody is for treatment of people who already have symptoms.

Mild to moderate symptoms within 10 days of onset.

Those are the people that this is targeted for.

That also are high risk.

That means they're either over the age of 65, or if they're under the age of 65, they have some other disease process, chronic illness that puts them at high risk.

Like diabetes or chronic kidney disease or chronic respiratory disease, something like that.

So there are very specific criteria within this emergency use authorization that we are obligated to follow in prescribing this antibody.

- But let's be honest, you're talking about a vaccine and then you talk about this immunotherapy treatment.

It's just another weapon that's being used by doctors.

This could actually be more important for so many people once they do get it that it could lessen the severity down the line if this proves to be effective, a useful treatment and can be mass replicated.

- Well, that that's correct.

This, you know what someone has symptomatic disease, the vaccine is not going to help.

It's too late for a vaccine.

So they're used in different populations.

Vaccine is to prevent spread, to prevent illness.

So it's going to be very, very important to get to the point where we get this thing, you know, under better control overall.

But for right now, with people getting infected with this virus at the rates that we're seeing, this monoclonal antibody hopefully is going to be an effective treatment modality that we can use to keep people out of the hospital.

- We've been talking a lot about people having, tired of hearing COVID.

There is that period of time that we're just tired of talking about it.

We're tired of hearing about it.

But what's it like inside the four walls of a hospital?

You're dealing with it up close and personal 24 hours, seven days a week.

Your staff has been dealing with this since even before March.

- You know, I have to give a call out to our staff.

I mean, that's a very good point.

Our staff has been incredible.

Our frontline nurses that have to put on all that PPE and take care of these patients at the bedside.

Our frontline doctors and nurse practitioners and PAs, the nursing assistants, even the registration people in the hospital, who have to bring these people in and get a registered and get them to the appropriate place.

Transfer personnel, our cleaning personnel.

I mean, think about the importance of cleaning these rooms And make sure that we get everything disinfected, et cetera.

Our mission partners, our employees have been incredible in this fight.

And you're right, there is a lot of COVID fatigue, both in the public and in the healthcare sector.

And believe when we talk about that every day and we're trying to put together support systems and protocols and buddy systems so we can fight this thing together.

That's a really important point.

And in fact, we had a meeting even this morning about that.

So yes, it is a daily struggle.

We're all swamped with work.

You know, we talk about bam as though it's just a flip of a switch.

An incredible amount of work went into getting this ready for infusion.

I mean, there's mixing requirements, there's infusion requirements, there's personnel requirements, there are reporting requirements.

These patients, since they're symptomatic and within 10 days, are highly contagious.

So there's all kinds of processes we have to get in place to protect our healthcare workers from these contagious patients while they take care of them.

So this was a huge undertaking, and we're just praying that the benefits are what we hope that they are.

- The Vice President for Physician Services for OSF Healthcare, Dr. Mark Meeker.

On the air, on the radio, on the web and on your mobile device, and now streaming on your computer.

Thanks for taking time to join us as we talk about the issues of the Cities.

(soft music) Wheelan Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

Now providing live stream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service at their chapel in Rock Island.