Two emergency room doctors at Rush Oak Park Hospital have tested positive for coronavirus and are quarantined at home while the hospital assesses “the overall risk of exposure,” the hospital said Thursday.
The announcement comes a day after Oak Park declared a “shelter-in-place” order to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19.
One doctor may have had contact with patients and coworkers when the doctor was contagious, Rush Oak Park Hospital spokesman Tobin Klinger said in an emailed statement.
The other doctor hadn’t seen patients for several days prior to testing positive, when he would have been contagious, Klinger said.
The hospital is “assessing the overall risk of exposure, working with the Illinois Department of Public Health and advising patients and peers as appropriate,” Klinger said.
The doctors likely contracted the virus outside the hospital, he said.
“In these uncertain times, one thing is for certain: staff in our healthcare systems are heroes for providing comfort and care under difficult circumstances with a highly transmissible disease,” Klinger said. “... We wish our colleagues a speedy recovery.”
On Wednesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that cases of coronavirus in Illinois had nearly doubled to 288.
“If you don’t feel well, please stay home. … You should just assume that you may have coronavirus. Just assume that,” Pritzker said at a news conference in downstate Murphysboro.
