Update from Administrator – November 6, 2020
November 6 , 2020
Dear Families,
As always, our team and I hope this email finds you safe and healthy.
We continue testing our staff and residents weekly as required by CMS, CDC and DPH. We currently have two residents on our isolation unit who have tested positive. The most recent one tested positive Monday. All other residents have tested negative. We do have one staff member that tested positive Tuesday. Residents will be tested weekly until we go 14 days with no new positives.
As you may have seen in the news lately, Connecticut, as well as other states across the country, are experiencing an uptick in positive COVID cases throughout many communities. With that in mind, CT DPH has ordered weekly testing of all staff to further safeguard against COVID entering our center. We are reminding our staff to not only practice safeguards against COVID in our center, but to be vigilant outside of our center and share these practices with their friends and loved ones.
“COVID Fatigue” is the new thing we hear about on the news: people are tired of wearing their mask and being vigilant in their hand washing and social distancing. This is leading to an uptick in COVID cases. These are simple things we must continue to do, not just in our centers, but in our personal lives to keep COVID out!
PLEASE wear your mask, wash your hands, and watch your distance.
Some updates
- FLU VACCINE: We STRONGLY encourage that all staff and residents receive an annual Influenza Vaccine. We have received our shipment of vaccines; please consider completing a consent form to ensure your loved one receives their vaccine if you have not done so already. Our goal is 100% participation of staff and residents.
- The Department of Public Health (DPH) also announced that are resuming routine surveys. As always, we will continue to communicate to you when a state or federal agency has conducted a survey here. They are currently coming in about every 10 days and we are happy to let you know that there have been no findings.
- Food is now allowed to be dropped off by families for their loved one’s enjoyment and take out delivery has also been authorized. Please coordinate delivery with us.
- Our Beauty Salon is open for salon services, following strict guidelines.
- Each nursing unit has tablets assigned for resident use such as virtual visits, games, etc. and many of our residents are enjoying learning how to use this technology and having the world at their fingertips.
- Our outdoor social distancing activities and programming continues weather permitting.
- Indoor Visits (currently on hold until no new positives): We will contact you as soon as we are able to resume indoor visits.
We have implemented our indoor visitation policy and procedures following the state and federal requirements. Based on that, nursing homes and visitors must adhere to the following conditions:
- We must limit the number of visitors per patient at one time and limit the total number of visitors in the center at a time. This will be based on the amount of physical space we have available for our designated visitation area, which will be our recreation room.
- We need to limit the duration of visits to help ensure all patients can receive visitors. Just like our outdoor visits, once we have more experience behind us, we can adjust this, if necessary.
- Cleaning and disinfecting of the designated visitation area will occur by our staff in between visits. This is another factor affecting the amount of time and numbers of visitors we can have in our center.
- Screening for anyone who enters our center – temperature and health screen questionnaire – will take place by our center staff.
- We cannot allow visitors to move freely throughout our center; visitors will go directly to the designated visitation area, recreation room.
- Hand hygiene must be followed and personal protection equipment (PPE) must be worn by visitors.
- Social distancing requirements remain as they do for our outside visits.
- We offer indoor and outdoor supervised social distancing visits 7 days a week.
Indoor, End Stage of Life Care Visits
Should a new case of COVID be identified in the center, all inside visits, except end stage of life and compassionate care visits will be temporarily put on hold.
Outside & “Alternative” Visits
Please know that outside and “alternative” visitations will continue. While the weather is changing, we will work to continue to do outside visits on our patio for as long as possible and window visits are still possible.
Remember that we do offer iPads for our residents to use for video visits, phone calls, etc. to ensure that you and your loved ones remain in contact, as best as you can during these very uncertain times.
As always, thank you for your patience and please stay safe and healthy!
Respectfully,
Don Davanzo, Administrator