5/18/2020
Dear Maristhill Residents and Families,
We wanted to provide an update of the COVID-19 positive tested residents. As of today, we have had 39 residents that have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. We have 14 residents that are currently in the facility being monitored for signs and symptoms, one has transferred to the hospital for care and sadly we had thirteen residents pass away since the COVID 19 outbreak. I would like to share with you that we have two residents from our short term rehab unit that had COVID 19 and they have tested negative in a recent re-test. In addition we have eleven residents that have gone thru the quarantine phase and that we have determined them to be COVID 19 Recovered. Our staff has been affected as well and to date we have 28 staff members testing positive for COVID-19. Many of our staff have been asymptomatic and will be quarantined for the CDC recommended time frame. As of today twelve of those staff members have returned to work safely after their mandated quarantine period. We continue to test staff as needed and anyone who is identified as COVID-19 positive will be not permitted to work until quarantined.
This past week we have reorganized our nursing units to accommodate the staffing needs of our reduced resident census on the three nursing units. The decision to move our residents is never one that we take lightly and we feel that the room changes that we have made are the most sensible ones that we could make at this time. We will be admitting new residents to our facility on the Ames unit in the next week or two from the hospitals and the community. Some of these new residents may have been exposed to COVID 19 or perhaps not. However, we will be quarantining the new residents for 14 days so that we can monitor their signs and symptoms for the COVID 19 virus. We do not want to mix the two resident populations together as many of our residents are becoming COVID Recovered.
We are pleased to share with 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. We can be followed on Facebook and Twitter as well. We will be posting letters communicating the ongoing events and news regarding the facility during this COVID 19 pandemic. Visit us at www.Maristhill.org.
We ask that our residents and staff do all that they can to support our community by following the recommendations set forth by the CDC:
- Social Distancing/staying home if possible
- Washing Hands for 20 seconds with soap and water
- Self-isolating if showing any signs or symptoms of COVID-19
- Seek medical assistance as necessary
Thank you all for your support. We will provide updates regularly and we will continue to call daily those families that have COVID + loved ones. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Regards,
James Tracy,
President
