Four members of the Roseburg Veterans Affairs Medical Center staff and one VA patient have tested positive for COVID-19, but officials there believe they currently have no active outbreak.

The VA confirmed Friday that Jose Jimenez, the VA nurse who is on a ventilator in a Portland hospital, is not the only staffer to have contracted the disease.

The VA declined to give detailed information about who the other staff members were — including what units they work in — in order to protect their privacy.

However, Shawn Tyson, executive assistant to the associate director and interim commander for emergency management, told The News-Review it’s not known where each of the four contracted the disease. Only two of them could have come in contact with each other.

The third was out of the office for a long period of time. The fourth wasn’t in contact with the others.

The one veteran patient who was confirmed positive of COVID-19 was an outpatient.

“That veteran was at no point in time even remotely close to any of our employees that are confirmed. So they’re not connected,” Tyson said.

Tyson said they’ve contained the situation through deep cleaning and testing of those who had contact with the individuals.

The department where each affected staff member worked is evacuated and given a deep clean, followed by an ultraviolet light treatment, he said.

The acute psych unit, where Jimenez worked, also received that treatment.

“We started cleaning it right about 1 o’clock in the afternoon and we finished about 6:30 in the morning the next day,” he said.

Tyson said the VA is the only hospital in the area with those ultraviolet machines.

“We can put those in a space, and it’ll completely kill any bug that’s in there,” he said.

After that, if possible, they relocate the service and close down the affected area for at least a week. After that, they do a second cleaning before moving employees back in.

The acute psych unit has been closed. Tyson said that change had already been planned, so it coincidentally worked out as a good way to protect patients. VA patients who need mental health treatment, including emergency treatment, are still being seen at the VA, just in a different location.

“As it stands right now, the APU is still empty,” he said.

Tyson said as with other positive test cases, everyone who could have come in contact with Jimenez was tested.

“We did test every person that we thought that he may have been in contact with — including the patents and the employees — and none of the patients came back positive at all,” he said.

Asked if the VA believes it has an active outbreak, Tyson said: “absolutely not.”

Enough time has passed since the onset of the affected people’s illnesses that VA officials believe it has not spread to other staff members or patients, Tyson said.

The VA is screening all visitors for COVID-19 symptoms before allowing entry on campus, and providing many of its services through telehealth or telephone appointments.

And it has a good supply of masks, Tyson said.

Tyson said the VA is also doing what it can to help out the community during the crisis. It stands ready to take overflow patients from CHI Mercy Medical Center if necessary, though it will not be taking COVID-19 or other respiratory patients since it does not have the intensive care unit such patients may need.

It is also sterilizing masks for Mercy.