Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC-RFA-OT20-2004 Supporting Tribal Public Health Capacity in Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Project AbstractKickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas Submission: May 31, 2020The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas is one of three federally recognized tribes in the State of Texas. The Reservation, which is located eight miles south of Eagle Pass, Texas (Maverick County); and has more than six miles of trust and adjoining fee land that directly parallels the US-Mexico border. Due to the current, unprecedented time, the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas is seeking to upgrade a manually deployable infection control shelter to allow for the ability to isolate and test COVID-19 symptomatic individuals. Also, the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas is proposing to enter into a contract with BIOFIRE Diagnostics, LLC., for a three year lease of their BioFire FilmArray 2.0. Currently, we use a private lab, and we are waiting anywhere from three to seven days for test results. With that said, we are currently conducting phone triage, admitting though a side entrance (cordoned off), and processing one at a time as a precaution. Patients are, subsequently sent home with instructions and protocols regarding quarantining at home. With this funding, we want to make the purchase of equipment to outfit a manually deployable infection control shelter in which we can isolate and process COVID-19 symptomatic individuals. These shelters are almost fully equipped, to include an air scrubber for negative pressure. Obtaining this equipment will allow us to more efficiently and more importantly, safely process our patients to prevent further spread of the virus. This infection control shelter is fully interoperable, scalable, and can be customizable. Not only will this infection control shelter prove invaluable for our current situation, but it will also become an integral part of any situation requiring emergen
cy response and coordination, responder safety and health, quarantine and isolation support, and infection control. This infection control shelter will be used to house infected persons until we can get them to a hospital should the situation with our local hospital not be able to take our patients. The local hospital in Eagle Pass, Texas has 201 beds with 11 isolation rooms. There is a population of just under thirty thousand in Eagle Pass. If these beds are full, we will not have a safe environment to, respectfully, provide for our sick until another hospital approximately three hours away can take them, if not being sent somewhere further because of the lack of capacity. Lastly, the infection control shelter may be used to isolate infected COVID-19 patients who are not able to isolate safely because of overcrowding in their homes. The FilmArray is an FDA-approved, user-friendly multiplex polymerase chain reaction (Multiplex PCR) system that simplifies molecular testing through a completely automated protocol, to include automated results analysis. Not only will be able to test for COVID-19, we will also be able to test for twenty-one respiratory viral and bacterial pathogens in about one hour. It identifies the most common viral and bacterial pathogens that cause respiratory tract infections that present with nearly indistinguishable symptoms.Together, outfitting our shelters and leasing the BioFire FilmArray 2.0 will facilitate the testing of these symptomatic individuals and allow us to obtain faster results thereby improving our efficiency and improving our health care management. Our primary focus is to provide our Tribal members a traditionally and culturally sensitive health care system.