12/23/2020
Dear Maristhill Residents and Families,
The facility has tested all of our negative and recovered COVID staff along with our negative and recovered COVID residents on December 21st and December 22nd per Department of Public Health guidance. The results from the test on these dates identified 13 additional staff members tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. In addition, the facility has 32 residents that have tested positive for COVID-19 since December 13th. I can share with you that many of the residents have been asymptomatic. We will continue to monitor their symptoms daily. We will continue to reach out to the families of the positive COVID-19 residents to provide updates regularly with Suzanne McClussky, LPN. The Activity Department will continue to receive virtual visitation call requests and direct any questions to the appropriate department for a response. We have placed those COVID-19 residents in appropriate areas of the facility so that any positive COVID-19 resident will not be co-mingled with negative COVID-19 resident. We will continue to test both staff and residents every three days until we have fourteen (14) consecutive days of negative results for our community. The Department of Public Health has instructed us not to admit any new residents. We had already taken this action on December 13th. We have implemented the recommended guidelines set forth by DPH and CDC to manage a COVID-19 outbreak in our community. In addition, we requested the assistance of the Department of Public Health to provide us with dedicated staff to care our positive Covid-19 residents and they are currently providing that care to our residents.
The risk of spreading the COVID 19 virus is very real and with the holidays upon us we are at greater risk to spread the virus. We had suspended all in-person visits effective December 14th. There has been no communal dining or activites during this period. We will resume those visits when clinically appropriate. We will maintain certain compassionate visits relating to end of life for those that are in need of these visits. We ask that you do not send any packages with food at this time as we wish to limit any items from entering the facility. In regards to packages with non-food items we will be quarantining those packages for a 72 hour period. Please no flowers at this time as well. We are aware that this is a difficult time of the year and we hope to resolve this outbreak as quickly as possible with your help.
Please contact our Activity Department to arrange virtual calls with your loved ones and if you have any clinical questions please provide you name and phone number so that a member of the nursing department can call you back to answer your questions. We ask this to prevent our nursing staff from being overwhelmed with calls during critical times of care to the residents.
We are asking families of our residents to provide us with the primary contact email so that we can provide information regarding important information. Please send an email to Anthony Taddeo, our Administrative Support Coordiantor. His email is Ataddeo@covh.org. Thank you for your assistance.
Thank you all for your support. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Regards,
James Tracy
James Tracy,
President
