Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Testing continues to provide all negative results for the campus. As the campus is now outbreak-free, we have been scheduling indoor visitation for all. Please call our main number to schedule a visit. At the time of the visit, you will be screened and reminded of the requirements we must follow to conduct the indoor visits. We look forward to hosting the visits and would appreciate any feedback you have on the visit process. We will review and make changes as we are able while still following our guidance.
CDC provided updated guidance regarding visits integrating vaccination status. While this is very exciting news for our vaccinated residents, state health officials have not provided direction for how we are to implement, if at all, into our visitation processes. We were notified on 11 Mar the officials were reviewing the updated guidance and we would be notified at a later date how the guidance would be implemented in our setting. As necessary, we will update our visitation practices based on the guidance we receive from state health officials.
Active outbreaks are at 25 (35 last week) still active in the community with 4 of those being in health facilities/entities. Positives through March 16th are 143, however, the rolling average for positive results for individuals tested in the last 7 days increased to 5.1%. Parkview Hospital increased hospitalizations related to COVID with 7 cases as of yesterday while St Mary Corwin has 0 COVID cases in their care. Parkview reported occupancy at 191 while St Mary Corwin is reporting 20 for occupancy. This leaves 74 available beds between the hospitals.
The campus has now been enjoying the benefits of our needlepoint bi-polar ionization (NPBI) process that has been installed in our HVAC system. NPBI was selected as a solution to our shared air concerns because it has been independently tested and proven to destroy COVID-19. In an independent study backed by a specialty HVAC company, Tayra, NPBIs were placed inside of a room where coronavirus patients had been housed. Within 10 minutes, the ionizers destroyed 99.4 percent of the coronavirus particles in the air and 80 percent of surface-living particles.
As a reminder, this letter is provided electronically either through email or our website. We do mail a copy the first week a new admit joins us if no email has been provided to share the information how to receive future copies via the website. If you are not receiving by email and would like to do so, let us know your address. Please contact the facilities with your questions and I appreciate your patience with our return calls to address your concerns or questions.
Sincerely,
Keith Jackson
Executive Director
