Unfortunately, this post is a mixture of some bad and some good news. The good news is that the 215 surveillance staff swabs that were sent yesterday have all returned negative. Today, we collected an additional 124 swabs and sent them to the lab for processing. We anticipate having the results of those tests tomorrow. The not so good news is that we had another nonclinical, unvaccinated employee test positive after developing symptoms. This employee has not had resident contact and we are in the process of completing contact tracing. This employee followed the correct procedure after developing symptoms overnight and was immediately referred to employee health for testing. The employee will not return to work until they have met the CDC guidelines for quarantine. What does this mean? We remain in contact with the CDC and our outbreak investigator. The current guidance is to continue serial weekly testing of all staff until we have two rounds of negative tests. We remain in an outbreak status which also impacts our ability to open to indoor visitation, but we are hopeful that this will happen soon. We have notified all residents and their representatives (when applicable) of the recent case and will continue to provide updates here.
We continue to encourage and educate all staff and residents that haven’t already received a vaccine to do so. Since our initial vaccination efforts in December, we have vaccinated 199 residents and 209 staff members. We are currently in the process of coordinating an additional vaccine clinic for residents and staff. Stay tuned for an upcoming date!
