8/14/2020
Dear Maristhill Residents and Families,
The facility will be testing all of our staff on August 19th per Department of Public Health guidance for those individuals that had previously tested negative. Our staff continues to show no signs or symptoms of COVID-19 as does our residents. The resident who previously tested positive is no longer considered COVID Positive and has been determined to be COVID Recovered. Again as stated before in a previous letter the resident showed no signs or symptoms of COVID-19 in the past and the resident continues to show no signs or symptoms as of the date of this letter.
We are pleased to inform you that the Department of Public Health has given us guidance to allow under certain restrictions communal dining and outside activities. The restrictions are limiting to the number of residents that can participate in these two important areas of the resident’s life. The restrictions include maintaining social distancing, sufficient staff availability, existing space limitations and usage of protective personal equipment by residents/staff. The staff is making every effort to include all residents so that we can minimize the fatigue and stress of this on-going pandemic on them. A consequence of expanding our outside activities and communal dining is that it impacts the availability of staff to assist in the outside visitation schedule for residents and their families. The addition of expanded time slots, off hours and weekend visitations has exhausted the current staffing resources of Maristhill. We are requesting that families limit their visits to once a week. This change will allow more opportunities for other families to visit at least once a week as well. I must tell you that watching the resident’s participate in outside activities this past ten days has been a joy. You can see their entire demeanor changing before your eyes. The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has taken a toll on our community and we still have a way to go before we see the end of this crisis. However, together with your support and the exceptional work done by the staff for our residents Maristhill will weather this storm.
The effort to control the spread of this virus must be shared by all as the individuals that have been identified as COVID positive with these two testing efforts have been asymptomatic. We ask that our residents and staff do all that they can to support our facility and our community by following the recommendations set forth by the CDC and DPH:
- Social Distancing/staying home if possible and wear a facemask in public;
- Washing Hands for 20 seconds with soap and water or use a hand sanitizer;
- Self-isolating if showing any signs or symptoms of COVID-19; and
- Seek medical assistance as necessary
We wish to remind you that we have updated our Maristhill website and we hope that this updated version will be helpful for the families to keep in contact with the activities and news from Maristhill. Also, we still utilize Facetime and Skype for visits with families and residents.
Thank you all for your support. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Regards,
James Tracy
James Tracy,
President
