October 19, 2020
All resident results received today have been negative. However, we did receive one more positive test result for a staff member. This staff member is asymptomatic and last worked Friday. Fortunately, we have not identified any high-risk interactions that this employee had with either residents or staff. This staff member will be away from campus as stipulated by health department guidance.
To facilitate the volume of testing that Kendal at Ithaca needs to do and the speed with which we need our results, we have partnered with Cayuga Medical Center’s COVID testing laboratory. Today CMC provided training to selected staff on a special printer that will allow Kendal to pre-register individual samples before they leave our campus. Doing this step of the process ahead of time greatly reduces the time the lab needs to prepare the sample for analysis. This step has been somewhat of a chokepoint in the flow of testing.
We also received the first vials to begin the transition to saliva testing for those staff or residents who would prefer it. These samples have a longer shelf life and don’t require refrigeration. We expect these changes will shorten the time it is taking to get our COVID test results.
Please note the correction to yesterday’s update. Thank you.