12/18/2020
Dear Maristhill Residents and Families,
The facility has tested all of our negative COVID staff and negative COVID residents on December 14th and December 17th per Department of Public Health guidance. The results from the test on December 14th was that two of our staff tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. In addition, I am sad to inform you that sixteen residents tested positive for COVID-19 from the test conducted on December 14th. The test results for the test conducted on December 17th indicated that three more staff members tested positive for COVID 19 and twelve residents tested positive COVID-19 as well. I can share with you that many of the residents have been asymptomatic. We will continue to monitor their symptoms daily. We will be testing all staff and residents on Monday, December 21st including those that have been identified as Recovered. We will continue to reach out to the families of the positive COVID-19 residents to provide updates. 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. The purpose of the testing every three days is to identify any staff or resident that may have been negative at one point, but has changed to positive COVID-19. We will continue to test both staff and residents every three days until we have seven (7) consecutive days of negative results for our community. We have implemented the recommended guidelines set forth by DPH and CDC to manage a COVID-19 outbreak in our community.
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 have suspended all in-person visits effective December 14th. There are 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