Yesterday two staff members of the Health Center tested positive for COVID-19. One individual works in Cascadilla House and, after conducting contact tracing, was determined to have had no close contacts. The second positive staff member works in Taughannock House where we did identify four residents as potential close contacts. We believe the risk was minimal and those individuals will be tested tomorrow, Sunday, and Wednesday next week. We do monitor all Health Center residents for potential signs and symptoms of COVID-19 on a daily basis.
The governor announced yesterday that new covid cases were down approximately 90% from the beginning of the January. While we have received no indication from the Department of Health, we are hopeful that we will see an easing of the testing requirement for visitation to Taughannock House. We continue to push our long-term care advocacy partner, LeadingAge NY, for more common-sense approaches to visitation.
Preparations are underway to maintain operations through the upcoming snow event. Some of the things that we routinely do are: offer truly essential staff members overnight accommodations and meals so that they can be here to work; arrange for meal delivery to residents in cottages so that they don’t need to venture out during the storm; ask residents to anticipate with easy to fix food options should this be a truly long-term event. As of now, we seem to be in the target area of the storm.
Given that Punxsutawney Phil has declared six more weeks of winter, I guess this shouldn’t surprise us !
Be well and stay safe,
Betsy
